Playing games in windowed mode when docked on Steam Deck

[Fx]

Hello, I haven't got a Steam deck yet, but I'm thinking about getting one. Before taking this step, I'd like to understand how docked mode works.

My biggest problem with playing on small screens, is that it causes me eye strain in certain games, mainly fps where you have to aim at small things far away.

That's why I'm planning to play this kind of games docked.

Now, I understand that steam deck hasn't got enough teraflops to run games belonging to the ps4/xbox1 generation at 1080p, so I think it's a forced choice to play them at lower resolutions.

Honestly I'm not bothered to play games on my 22" inches 1080p monitor at lower resolutions like 1152x864 or 1366x768 as long they are windowed, because the image seems to me less blurry than in fullscreen, and the dimensions of the windows are still acceptable (i.e. something around 13-15 inches.)

If you play on microsoft windows on steam big picture, and you choose to play in windowed mode from the in-game settings, steam will allow you to play in a window in the center of the screen sorrounded by a dark-gray background that I find pleasant and not immersion-breaking. (See the image in the link below).

https://imgur.com/devW5zz

My question is the following: can steam deck when docked and plugged to an external monitor do the same thing or does it run games only in fullscreen or stretched to fill your entire monitor?

Thank you very much for you help!

P.S. I have posted this thread already on general discussions, i'm new to the forum and I don't know exactly the right place for this discussion; hope this is the right one

[deaddoof]

Yea. You can run plug in your steam deck into an external monitor. You can render on a lower resolution and use FSR to upscale your game to fill the monitor

As a fair warning, there has been numerous bugs with external output lately. Even Valve official dock has bugs, hopefully these bugs has not hit stable yet. These bugs are in the beta builds

My pinephone cell phone dock is more stable than official dock but the downside it will not be powerful enough to charge the deck while playing games.

[Fx]

How bad are this bugs? :(

[Rodomar705]

As bad as your display will not output anything level. Not sure why they haven't fixed it yet, I've reported it when .120 dropped around 3 months ago. Still nothing.

[Fx]

Mmmh not good my friend. Any suggestions on third party docks?

[Rodomar705]

Not really sure sadly, I rarely uses the dock, besides when I need to set up stuff, tinker with it (or fix whatever Valve broke the next main update /s).

They usually fix them, it's the when lately that's slipping a bit.

Hope that someone else will give you more pointers as recommendation goes.

[deaddoof]

Fx lähetti viestin:

Mmmh not good my friend. Any suggestions on third party docks?

This dock will probably not output enough power for the steam deck to charge it while playing. I am using the non pro dock.

https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-pro-usb-c-docking-bar/

This vendors creates custom Linux hardware. Their margins are narrow. If the product works, no returns. Even when software driver are missing.

I might buy this product myself in a few months later, since I need another dock.

[codexous]

my official dock hasn't had problems as of now had it since it went on sale. The setup of the external monitor has to be done in desk-top mode. i am using a MSI 165 hrz 1080 p display with the official dock. You can play windowed and full screen. You can set the monitors supported resolution in desk-top as well. There are games that will run in 1080 more old then new.
but yes you can play in windowed mode with the official dock.
Also on stable mode and i haven't encountered "BUGs" outside of normal deck related krik outs. Steam deck sass is what i call that.
I mainly played docked