Fullscreen vs Windowed/borderless

[seamount0]

Hi, I find more useful to use windowed(borderless) because with it I can use ALT+TAB and see other tasks.
But if I remember, windowed also means more lag ?
may you please remember me pro & con of fullscreen vs windowed ?

and is there a difference to how to have better graphics ? may I use nvidia settings (too improve AA, etc) with each of the two ?

 

[Denis Betty]

Not sure.
@Martin Fiala might be able to help out?

 

[Case_]

"It's complicated" would be the shortest version.

It might mean more lag, but it doesn't have to. Depends on a lot of other things, including the version of your Windows, but also how the game is setup and more. So not easy to list pros and cons, because specific things have to be taken into consideration, and we know basically nothing about this case in particular, not even the version of Windows.

I'm not sure if you can use nVidia settings with rF2, though. I was never really able to, because rF2 does quite a few things differently than other games it seems, but it might also just be something on my setup.

But I've been running rF2 in borderless for quite some time now (because I want my SimHub overlays), and I find the lag tolerable on my setup.

 

[seamount0]

I have windows 10

 

[seamount0]

About graphics, In many sims I use nvidia settings to improve anti aliasing and it works ... but not in rf2 where the lateral virtual mirrors (and other borders) are serrate (as a saw)

 

[Case_]

Windowed behavior differs even between various Win 10 versions. But generally can be said that in Win 10, it usually adds a bit of lag, because Win 10 force triple buffered vsync when running windowed. Though at least in the latest version, it's a weird kind of vsync, because while it removes tearing, it doesn't limit your framerate to your refresh rate like vsync normally does if you're running the game with vsync off. So it gets a bit more complicated then.

I'm on the latest Win 10 version and I do run rF2 in borderless, like I said, and I use vsync (the Video one in rF2 settings), and using the frame limiter trick (limit your framerate to around .005 to .010 of your *exact* refresh rate via RTSS) and also the ultra low latency mode in nVidia drivers, I get lag that is quite acceptable for me, even though I consider myself being quite sensitive to it. Another option for me would be to run the game at double the refresh rate with vsync off, that would make the lag even less, but my CPU is too weak to be able to sustain 120 fps in rF2 at all times, not enough single-threaded power. And running vsync off with framerate limiter set to anything below double the refresh rate is not as smooth, but more importantly, it also causes random microstutter for me, so not really a better option.