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So, if you wanted an overlay – the frame would be rendered, then intercepted by the command that generates the overlay before the frame was presented, inject the overlay, then finally present the frame to the graphics card. In order to create an overlay, the outside application would have to step into and intercept the rendering process. While running with FSE, overlays are possible, but they may cause some issues.
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Overlays, which are windows within the game that are not created by the game (such as Game Bar) are another of the key limitations of FSE. In addition, there can be performance issues when you try and use overlays or alt-tabbing. One example is when you give an application full control of your desktop, you cannot run any other processes in the background. However, PC Gaming has evolved and FSE can bring challenges that can hinder game play and the overall gaming experience in subtle ways. As a user, this means that you are getting a fully immersive gaming experience while seeing great performance from your system. However, if you do find that you are experiencing any issues that may be related to full screen optimizations, please head to the troubleshooting section where we will walk through how to optimiz e your system and provide feedback to our team.į ull S creen E xclusive (FSE) was created to give the application or game you are running full control of your desktop and display. We have extensive performance data that indicates that almost all users who use Fullscreen Optimizations have equal performance to Full Screen Exclusive. These benefits include faster PC commands such as alt-tab, multiple monitor set up s and overlays. You get the visual experience and performance of running your game in FSE, but with the benefits of running in a windowed mode. With the release of Windows 10, we added Full s creen Optimizations – which takes full screen exclusive games and run s them instead in a highly optimized borderless windowed format that takes up the entire screen. This means the size of window can be adjusted to fill the entire screen w hile other processes still run in the background. In a borderless windowed mode, the game is still running in a window but has no border around it. The D esktop W indow M anager (DWM) has control of the display, while the graphics resources are shared among all applications, unlike in a Fullscreen Exclusive environment. In windowed game mode, the game is deployed in a bordered window which allows other applications and windows to continue running in the background. Fullscreen Exclusive mode gives y our game complete ownership of the display and allocat ion of resources of your graphics card. Games on PC generally offer three different types of display modes: Fullscreen Exclusive (FSE), W indowed, and B orderless W indowed. TLDR – Demystifying Fullscreen vs Windowed Mode
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