BFG wont play in fullscreen unless it is native res

[DeathShot]

I have a laptop with an Intel i7-6700HQ, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and a Nvidia GTX 960M running natively at 4k resolution. When Doom 3 BFG runs at 4k, it is in full screen but the FPS (especially in the cut scenes) is abysmal, like 8-12fps. This is ridiculous considering it is an old game, with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ graphics, and newer games with much better graphics (Fallout 4 on Ultra anyone?) run flawlessly @ constant 30FPS on my setup. Dropping the resolution to 1920x1080 over triples the frame rate and makes the game look slightly less bad, however even though the game is supposedly set to full screen (I don't actually see an option in the settings to change it to Windowed, it just says full screen next to the resolution selection, so I assume it is set to full screen) it runs in a boarder-less window. Native 1080p, for the record, take about a forth of my screen, so by default the game is running in the top left quadrant of the screen. It is always on top, you cannot show the desktop while this game is running or alt-tab into another application (which is stupid, but not the issue here, just an aside). What is weirder still is that it changes the resolution of my entire desktop. So while the game is running in native 1080p in the top left corner everything else is downscaled to 1080p and running as it would in 1080p. This is evident by my desktop icons and the Windows which you can see open on the other 3/4th of the screen.

This is a screenshot [i.imgur.com] to show the weird phenomenon.

Anyone know of any fixes?

[DeathShot]

Originally posted by NightCurseX:

Must be a nvidia problem, i have a full AMD system and i can run the game maxed out without any problem.
And dont tell how bad the game looks, remember that it is older as like Fallout4, so any comparison is pointless, but in the time where Doom3 comes out it was a milestone in case of the graphics, gameplay, technology and some more things.
Even the classic Doom3 had problems in the past with nvidia graphic cards.

But concerning your problem you can try at C:\Users\(Username)\Saved Games\id Software\DOOM 3 BFG\base changing the line r_fullscreen "x" from 1 to 0, for some players it helps.

Have a nice day =)

I tried that, and then I tried going back to full screen mode, but it didn't change anything.
That sets the game to windowed mode, which is not what I want. It gives me a smaller bordered window (I believe it is 720p?) and does not scale the rest of my desktop. However the game is unplayable at those resolutions (Even 1080p) regardless unless it is stretched and scaled to fit the screen. If I resize the window to fit my screen the game resolution resizes too, to a weird custom one which is even harder to render and reduces the performance further.


Also, I didn't compare their esthetics, I stated that a game with superior graphics runs fine while this one does not. The quality of the graphics does matter because it is the main strain on performance. You can argue esthetics (or that we shouldn't be arguing esthetics) all you wish but if a "top of the line" game from 2012 does not run as well as a "top of the line" game from 2015 on Ultra for the PC, then the top of the line game from 2012 is optimized like garbage and that probably would explain why it can't run in full screen like a normal application. The annoying thing is that the original DOOM 1 through 3 work just fine on my computer in full screen at whatever resolutions I want to run them.

[ChaosBahamut]

Are you sure Doom 3 BFG's using your 960m? (some games tend to default to the IGP due to nVidia's Optimus not working the way it should for said games) Might help with your performance issues which would make having to select a lower than native resolution unneeded.

[DeathShot]

Originally posted by ChaosBahamut:

Are you sure Doom 3 BFG's using your 960m? (some games tend to default to the IGP due to nVidia's Optimus not working the way it should for said games) Might help with your performance issues which would make having to select a lower than native resolution unneeded.

Yup, first thing I checked was the NVIDIA control panel settings. It was set to auto select (which stated it was using the NVIDIA GPU) but I changed it to always use the GPU regardless, didn't make a difference. If I'm lucky and motion blur is disabled completely (because I'm really ill right now and at 8fps w/ motion blur the way that opening cut scene is being live rendered is literally giving me a headache and making me want to vomit) I get a whopping 9fps. I've watched that stupid looking space shuttle stuttering along that Martian landing pad so many times now trying to troubleshoot it, that if the textures weren't so low res, flat, and plain I could probably have memorized every scratch that thing had.

I realize I keep ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on this game's graphics, which in my opinion is fair and by no means reflects on how the rest of the game is (though honestly, even if it had amazing graphics, doom 3 wouldn't be the most amazing game out there, just nostalgic and related to a trilogy I enjoyed from my childhood). With that said, if ID didn't cut so many corners and actually made it right, I wouldn't be complaining about it. I am so aggravated that they couldn't get FULL SCREEN right. I've spent hours on this game, and never got past the first cut scene. I have probably spent more time on this modern game at this point trying to get it work than I've spent trying to get 16bit windows games designed for Windows 95, working on a 64bit bit machine from 2010 AND FINISHING SAID GAME.

[Lumin]

Turn down the Blur setting. I turned it off and it reduced lag immensely. (i've got a GTX 980)