Alt+Tab woes

Desired behaviour:

Restoring fullscreen mode after ALT+TAB by pressing ALT+ENTER should result in previously set fullscreen resolution.

Current behaviour:

Restoring fullscreen mode after ALT+TAB by pressing ALT+ENTER results in native display resolution.

Reasoning:

Lower than native screen resolution is used for a reason, typically on slower machines that are incapable of running the game in native display at acceptable framerates. On a slower machine with high resolution display, restoring the game to native resolution results in huge lag, which is far from enjoable. Players have to go to menu and change resolution - unnecessary waste of time and effort. I believe fixing this will greatly improve player experience.

 

I don't really understand this problem but I do remember that I always to this ↓ after a new install :

1 - first select full screen and apply
2 - select borderless and apply

I remember having alt + tab problems long ago and this always fixed it, maybe it has been resolved, I don't know, but I'm so used to it that I always set new installs up this way and I never have alt + tab issues anymore. Might it be resolved, then you can try just selecting borderless and see what gives.

 

@NOCARGO

To see the problem
1. Set your BeamNG fullscreen resolution to something low e.g. 1280x720.
2. Press ALT+TAB or ALT+ENTER or WIN+TAB, which leaves fullscreen mode
3. Press ALT+ENTER to restore fullscreen
4. Your BeamNG resolution is NOT 1280x720. You have to navigate menus to set it to 1280x720 again.

Described behaviour is wrong. The game should honor manually set fullscreen resolution and apply it upon restoring from windowed to fullscreen, instead of ignoring it.

 

Yes I see what you mean. When applied full screen and alt tabbing it returns to 'windowed' and not precisely 'full screen'. Again, if you use 'borderless' this won't happen, you will be able to alt tab freely without loosing a full and borderless screen.

 

@NOCARGO I am genuinely grateful that you are trying to help

Game returning to windowed after alt-tabbing is not a problem in any way. Game not saving fullscreen display resolution is the problem. Game should save fullscreen display resolution setting. Game should return to previously saved fullscreen resolution setting when switching from windowed mode by pressing ALT+ENTER, instead of returning to native fullscreen resolution.

If you use borderless window at any resolution other than native, it results in a small borderless window rather than fully filled screen. And there is a performance penalty from running in any windowed mode compared to fullscreen. The whole reason of running lower resolution is to get acceptable framerates on machines that are incapable of delivering them at native resolution. Bottom line, borderless windowed mode does not work as you describe. And even if it did, it would not be a solution due to performance penalty it brings, compared to fullscreen.

The problem is very simple. Game should save and honor previously set fullscreen resolution. That's it.
There is no saving grace or alternative solution to this problem. There is no technical or philosophical reason why BeamNG should not save and honr previously set fullscreen resolution. It's a few lines of code that WILL make the experience better for anyone playing BeamNG on lower end hardware.

 

There must definitely be a technical reason why this happens.

Oh I see your point now. Luckily the devs do all they can to keep BeamNG running on low end pc's, mine is half a potato too still

Now let me try to genuinely help you :

1. Set your BeamNG fullscreen resolution to something low e.g. 1280x720. - Done

2. Press ALT+TAB or ALT+ENTER or WIN+TAB, which leaves fullscreen mode - Done

3. Press ALT+ENTER to restore fullscreen - I used ALT + TAB

4. Your BeamNG resolution is NOT 1280x720. You have to navigate menus to set it to 1280x720 again.[/QUOTE] - Mine is (because of alt+tab)

I've tested this through thoroughly and my setting stays on 1280x720 when I put it there. (including shutting and restarting the game)

The problem lies here : DON'T USE ALT + ENTER

Just alt+tab back into BeamNG and your resolution will stay preserved. If you start the game with another window open, the first time
your game window (at least mine) might open half sized, in this case you can use WIN KEY + ARROW UP to maximize and after this
the window stays maximized during alt tabbing.

The alt + enter problem itself seems a good point for 0.22 Discussion Thread.
edit - just posted

Hope this helps

 

For me, this results in windowed 1280x720, which occupies rather small part of the screen, yet runs worse than fullscreen 1280x720.

Either way, after ALT+TAB'bing from low resolution fullscreen, player is forced to go through menus to manually set the game either to fullscreen again (if they didn't use ALT+ENTER), or correct resolution again (if they used ALT+ENTER). Player can't just continue playing the game, or swiftly press some key combination to apply previous settings. They have to suffer the tedium of going through menus every time, be it for changing to fullscreen, or changing fullscreen resolution, after switching from BeamNG to any other app.

BeamNG does not scale resolution in windows. I.e. you have 1920x1080 native display resolution, and played in 1280x720 fullscreen. You press ALT+TAB, do your things in other apps, get back to BeamNG window in whatever way, maximize BeamNG window by pressing WIN+UP - and end up with 1900x1000 window or something along the lines - which will push the GPU harder than 1920x1080 fullscreen.

If the game could e.g. run in 1280x720 and scale that 1920x1080 borderless window, that would be a partial solution, due to any windowed mode imposing performance penalty compared to fullscreen, that might be the difference between acceptable (25-30 FPS), and inadequate (less than 25 FPS) gaming experience.