Windowed vs Full Screen

[silverdevil]

I started DCS and noticed the task bar showing. Indicating windowed. Clicking in the DCS window I get DCS. Today I tried Alt-enter and I could tell it changed. I felt as though DCS performed worse. Is there a way to go back to windowed from full screen? Windowed seems to perform better. Thanks.

[MAXsenna]

I started DCS and noticed the task bar showing. Indicating windowed. Clicking in the DCS window I get DCS. Today I tried Alt-enter and I could tell it changed. I felt as though DCS performed worse. Is there a way to go back to windowed from full screen? Windowed seems to perform better. Thanks.

Should be the opposite actually. Turn on framerates, use LAlt-Enter and the better result should be the fullscreen one.
Anyway, to answer your question, LAlt-Enter (multiple) will switch it between the two, even if it doesn't show any taskbar/border.
Cheers!

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[Lange_666]

Since 2.7 full screen isn't full screen any more but windows borderless mode (which is still a window). 

Time to bring it back... 

 

[silverdevil]

@MAXsenna and @Lange_666 thanks for replies. 

 

i thought it was interesting, and possibly just my imagination, that the performance seemed to drop when full screen i hadn't noticed before. it may be a clue to others' issues with performance.

[CBStu]

I have always run in windowed mode. I like it because I am sure still learning and having the task bar there allows me to pause DCS and bring up Chucks Guide, or a video tutorial, or some info I have saved such as range of different missiles. I haven't noticed any change since going to 2.7 stable.

[MAXsenna]

I have always run in windowed mode. I like it because I am sure still learning and having the task bar there allows me to pause DCS and bring up Chucks Guide, or a video tutorial, or some info I have saved such as range of different missiles. I haven't noticed any change since going to 2.7 stable.

You can do that in full screen too.
To each his own, but I seriously hate the taskbar below my cockpit. I just pause (sometimes I don't even pause ) and LAlt-Tab to the desktop or whatever other open app I want to use.

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[silverdevil]

there is no real way to show whether i am in window or not right? is it in DCS.log or something? my setting for "full screen" is checked so i always thought i was full screen.

[MAXsenna]

there is no real way to show whether i am in window or not right? is it in DCS.log or something? my setting for "full screen" is checked so i always thought i was full screen.

Good question. I usually turn on the FPS counter in NVIDIA, and that's the only way for me to know.
The log might show, I'm running it live in Baretail or cmtrace, I'll check later.

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[Lange_666]

9 hours ago, silverdevil said:

there is no real way to show whether i am in window or not right? is it in DCS.log or something? my setting for "full screen" is checked so i always thought i was full screen.

I've asked this before and got no answer. Before full screen was full screen, since 2.7 i have no clue what i'm looking at when full screen is ticked. Alt-enter seems to switch between full screen and borderless window but after a few taps of these i'm lost and i have no clue what i'm looking at, full screen or borderless.

 

@MAXsenna: where do you turn that FPS counter on in nVidia and how do you see the difference between full screen and borderless with it? Or do you just look at the FPS values for determination?

[silverdevil]

4 hours ago, Lange_666 said:

I've asked this before and got no answer. Before full screen was full screen, since 2.7 i have no clue what i'm looking at when full screen is ticked. Alt-enter seems to switch between full screen and borderless window but after a few taps of these i'm lost and i have no clue what i'm looking at, full screen or borderless.

 

@MAXsenna: where do you turn that FPS counter on in nVidia and how do you see the difference between full screen and borderless with it? Or do you just look at the FPS values for determination?

 

@Lange_666 https://www.howtogeek.com/209710/4-quick-ways-to-see-a-pc-game’s-fps-frames-per-second/

[MAXsenna]

I've asked this before and got no answer. Before full screen was full screen, since 2.7 i have no clue what i'm looking at when full screen is ticked. Alt-enter seems to switch between full screen and borderless window but after a few taps of these i'm lost and i have no clue what i'm looking at, full screen or borderless.
 
@MAXsenna: where do you turn that FPS counter on in nVidia and how do you see the difference between full screen and borderless with it? Or do you just look at the FPS values for determination?

My bad. It doesn't seem to work. I have NVIDIA Experience installed, which let's you turn on FPS counter (LAlt+R), and then I can LAlt+Enter and the counter goes away and then I assume that I'm not in fullscreen anymore.
But I have tested, and there is no FPS difference for me at all. I turn in the DCS counter at the same time for comparison.

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[Art-J]

I use 60Hz monitor and V-sync, so if I'm getting 60fps that means I'm in full screen, if above 60, that means borderless windowed. I don't know how guys with 120+ Hz monitors tell the difference though.

[silverdevil]

i am sure this has been mentioned as an idea and have no idea if it is feasible. it would be nice to have the display mode noted in the DCS FPS counter. like i said though. i tried to change the mode to see if there was a noticeable difference in performance. there seemed to be.

[Worrazen]

Windows / Microsoft is changing the defaults OS-wide in terms how they deal with fullscreen applications, they're moving away from exclusive fullscrean (the real one that we knew for ages) into some kind of a hybrid that allows for overlays and other modern stuff while being sort of better than the standard windowed which is less performant and has other downsides.

 

At least that's how I understood it when I read the MS blogs and videos, so you guys need to play with the "Fullscreen Optimizations" options in Win10 settings, but some people/machines/games report messing things up, I forgot a bit.

Edited August 30, 2021 by Worrazen

[Lange_666]

Ah, i didn't know about the change in approach.

My biggest gripe in all this is that now the main DCS screen on a multi-monitor setup (where only one monitor is used for DCS and the other for docs) goes minimized the moment you click on the second monitor. Plain annoying if you ask me. But it still worked pre-2.7 so the change was made within DCS.