Glossary:Windowed
Graphics and video
Resolutions
Video settings
- Field of view (FOV)
- Windowed / borderless fullscreen
- Anisotropic filtering (AF)
- Anti-aliasing (AA)
- High-fidelity upscaling
- Vertical sync (Vsync)
- Frame rate (FPS)
- High dynamic range (HDR)
- Ray tracing (RT)
- Color blind mode
Hardware
Windowed mode and all of its various names or combinations of terms (bordered, borderless, maximized, fullscreen, windowed, and so on) refers to presenting the rendered frames of a game in some kind of window that is managed by the compositing window manager of the operating system[Note 1] along with the rest of the application windows on the system. This in contrast to the classic exclusive fullscreen (FSE) mode on the Windows operating system where the game took ownership of the display device and presented frames directly to the display without involving the compositing window manager, a necessary requirement of the early 3D era due to the lack of a proper hardware accelerated compositor.
Key points
- Modern windowed modes allows seamless task switching with no risk of crashes or freezes with a minor to no loss in performance, and keeps custom color profiles in use for games.
- May eliminate screen tearing on Windows if software composition occurs as the DWM effectively applies its own vertical sync,[1] though will subsequently cause additional input lag as well. It is possible to disable the vertical sync, however it requires either engaging modern optimizations in Windows 10+ or by disabling DWM on Vista/7.[2]
- Display mode can often be toggled or cycled through using Alt+↵ Enter in supported games.
History
Presenting frames through a window has historically resulted in additional input latency and performance losses due to the need of the compositor to compose the frames presented by the game along with any other windows drawn by other applications; an action that were typically performed through software composition performed on the CPU. These downsides however have diminished in modern times and as of 2022 most compositors are able to perform some form of optimization or hardware accelerated composition that reduces or outright eliminates the downsides of presenting frames through a regular window.
Starting with Windows 10 the classic fullscreen exclusive mode was regarded as obsolete by Microsoft as the optimizations introduced for borderless fullscreen games allows for performance and latency equal to that of fullscreen exclusive, while still allowing switching between tasks and applications without any slow display mode switch having to occur. To allow older games running in fullscreen exclusive mode to take advantage of these optimizations, Windows 10 v1607 introduced a transparent optimization layer in the operating system called fullscreen optimizations (FSO). With the release of Windows 11 22H2 these optimizations were extended to also cover older games running in a regular non-maximized window mode.
As a result of the compositor optimizations introduced in Windows 10, the Direct3D 12 graphics API was released without any support for the classic fullscreen exclusive mode. Any "fullscreen exclusive" mode that DirectX 12 games might feature is in reality a fake/emulated mode where the Windows desktop temporarily changes refresh rate and/or resolution to the one requested by the game, but the compositor otherwise remains in ownership of the display. This allows games to use refresh rates and/or resolutions not used by the regular desktop, while the composition window manager is still present and able to at any moment step in and start composing if necessary.
Windowed
For a list of games, see List of games that support windowed.
Windowed typically refers to a mode where the game presents the rendered image in a regular window that is not maximized (fullscreen) on the monitor. The window in question may or may not use window decorations (borders) around the contents of the window, typically indicated by the use of bordered and borderless in the name of the mode. This mode should not be mistaken for borderless fullscreen windowed mode, which specifically removes the window decorations (borderless) and maximizes (fullscreen) the window to have it cover the whole monitor.
- Some games do not have a native windowed mode; specific workarounds may be required.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
For a list of games, see List of games that support borderless fullscreen windowed.
Borderless fullscreen windowed refers to a mode where the game presents the rendered image in a maximized (fullscreen) window without decorations (borderless) making it cover the whole monitor. This feature is known by a lot of different names between games, such as borderless mode, maximized window, fullscreen window, or any combination thereof. Some titles or engine might also refer to it using less common names, such as scaling or even fullscreen if the game does not support exclusive fullscreen mode. The Unity engine is particularly famous for labeling its borderless fullscreen window mode for just "fullscreen".
- Native feature in many modern titles, and can often be forced in the majority of older titles.
- Can sometimes be used to enable wider or higher resolutions via resizing the game's viewport.[3][4]
Issues fixed
Game crashes on startup
- Certain borderless applications have to be started before the game itself and not while the game is running.
Window constantly resizes itself
- After applying the borderless mode simply restart the game itself, while keeping the borderless application open.
Mouse moves outside of the game window
- See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Override the display mode of a game
Force windowed mode
- Expand the sections or click on the relevant link to see the full instructions.
See Special K for instructions. |
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DxWnd |
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Instructions
Notes
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3D-Analyze |
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Instructions
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D3DWindower[5] |
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Instructions
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Force borderless fullscreen windowed mode
Windows
- Expand the sections or click on the relevant link to see the full instructions.
Borderless Gaming |
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Notes
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See Special K for instructions. |
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GeDoSaTo |
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Simple Runtime Window Editor |
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Fullscreenizer |
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Windowed Borderless Gaming |
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Use Magpie |
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See AutoHotkey for instructions. |
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Linux
- Most Linux window managers allow fullscreen applications to natively run under a borderless mode by default.
General instructions |
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i3 tiling window manager |
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Run Steam game in new X server instance: |
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xinit %command% :1
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Notes
References
- ↑ Microsoft Developer Network - Double Buffered Graphics
- ↑ DirectX Developer Blog - For best performance, use DXGI flip model - last accessed on 2018-04-13
- ↑ Lantern | WSGF
- ↑ Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team | WSGF
- ↑ XeNTaX • View topic - So, I fully translated D3DWindower...
- ↑ Unexpected Error has occurred popup during installation · Issue #408 · PeterTh/gedosato
- ↑ Feral Support - Ganeral FAQs (archived) - last accessed on 2022-10-03