Benq 260H: Odd flickering when entering/ exiting games.

[maou42]

Hi

My monitor often flickers strongly when I exit a game or app. It looks like what an old multyscan used to do when changing resolution.

I game at the same res and refresh rare as my desktop.

Any idea as to what may be the cause of that?

Thanks.

[RealNC]

Exclussive fullscreen incurs a mode switch, even if it's just going from the same mode to the same mode. If the game isn't blacklisted by Windows 10 as being incompatible with fullscreen optimizations, then it shouldn't happen though.

[maou42]

Thank you. Well spotted.

I usually always disable fullscreen optimisations in the exe/ shortcut options for games?

Is there still any point in doing so? I know it used to be a problem before but I now hear that the fps penalty has been addressed.

Thanks

[RealNC]

The new optimized fullscreen mode is actually way better than the old one. No mode switch, alt+tab is just as good as windowed mode, vsync can still be turned off, and it counts as fullscreen for g-sync/freesync since DWM gets out of the way and only temporarily activates when there's some Windows element that needs to be displayed (like the audio volume bar.)

Going forward, this new mode is going to be the native fullscreen mode. Checking the "disable fullscreen optimizations" checkbox makes Windows load the game through backwards compatibility redirections (called "shims") in the same way as when enabling the various compatibility workarounds in the properties (like enabling XP/Vista/etc compatibility mode.)

So the "disable FSO" checkbox is really a compatibility workaround now, just like the other compatibility settings. I'd say it's best to not enable it, unless an old game gives you issues. New games are developed with the new fullscreen mode in mind. Old games are usually compatible. Even games from 2004 work for me, and in fact they work better since in some cases games that would crash in Windows 10 when alt+tabbing now work fine with FSO! (Colin McRae Rally 2005 for example.)

I didn't see any perf issues in the games I play, but you can easily test that yourself, especially with games that have an in-game benchmark.

[maou42]

Many thanks for your well informed opinion;)