Minor problem with duel monitors

[a B1 Battle Droid]

Okay this is something I wanted to talk about, but it's kind of complicated.... It's actually more of a Windows 10 thing that I've been having problems with. But the way it affects this specific game is oddly unique, so I figured it was worth mentioning. When Windows 10 launched, one of its bells'n'whistles was this feature where the OS would be "smarter" in its ability to prioritize apps, and it would make fullscreen applications (games, usually) top priority while slashing the processing of all background apps. On its surface this sounds like a good idea, but for me it's caused some annoyances when using two monitors. I like to watch youtube a lot on my secondary while playing casual games like this, but while doing so in full screen games, anything drawn on my secondary monitor lags like hell - and it's not because of hardware limitations either, I have a decent setup and and like 18gbs of memory. Since I've noticed this, I could only assume this issue happens for me because of Windows 10's stupidness, because I never had this issue before upgrading.

Ordinarily it's not too bad, because I like to use Borderless Gaming while running games in windowed mode to simulate fullscreen mode for games, which helps get rid of this issue.Actually the main reason I started using Borderless Gaming a lot for games was because of an entirely different problem with my Nvidia GPU - a lot of fullscreen games have washed out color schemes that override what I've set for my computer in the Nvidia Control Pannel - but that's besides the main point here.

Now the thing is, my workaround USUALLY works to get a game playing in borderless windowed mode in order to not experience lag on my secondary monitor. But this game seems to be the only exception I've found - it's inconsistant. I can get it to do what I want, but only after alt-tabbing multiple times and just mashing the keyboard randomly until it decides to let me be in the game, while also not lagging on the other monitor. It's a real pain in the ass sometimes, and I can't find a reasonable pattern. It's just trial and error until it eventually works, but sometimes it takes me several minutes to make it stop this. And when I do get the game working in borderless windowed mode like I want, I can't risk moving out to the other monitor to change the video or anything I want to do on the second monitor, because doing so will reset this little dance, and when I try to go back into the game on the main monitor, the secondary monitor will lag again until I aggressively alt tab and rapidly click on my secondary monitor and my primary until for some reason, the game, my web browser on the secondary monitor, and windows 10 all decide to work with eachother.

I don't really know if this is something that can even be fixed, for I barely understand this problem as it is, and it may be more of an OS problem than anything with the game. But this kind of "trial and error" feel.... I only get it with this game. Usually my setup either works, or it doesn't. Plain and simple. But for this game, my weird way of doing this only works when it feels like it. It just...baffles me. It's not really even a game-ruining issue or anything, it's just so confussing that I'd like to see if anyone else knows what I'm talking about. More importantly though, does anybody ever have to deal with this kind of issue with duel monitors and full screen apps with Windows 10? Or any other OS? I'm fairly certain this is a Windows 10 thing and I wish I could make it stop. Windows 7 worked just fine with running a browser video or even a movie in the secondary monitor while playing a fullscreen game in the other.

[a B1 Battle Droid]

I should mention I get the lag on the secondary monitor while running this game in fullscreen, in windowed, AND when trying to play in windowed with Borderless Gaming. But by yelling at it for a while, for some reason the later option will prevail, it just takes time and doing the same thing over and over to get it to do so.

[TheXev]

When Windows 10 Redstone was released, it introduced a strange bug into PA that caused the
Start menu to appear over the game even if it was set to full screen. Sometimes the start bar wouldn't show, but if you clicked in the lower area of the screen the Start menu would respond.

The devs implemented a fix for this issue and the result is the strangness you experiance now. I don't like it, and I never upgraded to Redstone so I never experianced the Start menu issue... The devs fix seems half assed but the result is having to deal with this strangeness you have noticed.

I wish the game has a way to disable this fix so the screen would operate normally like it used to (I have an AMD video card btw, so I don't believe the strangeness is related to the installed video card).

[a B1 Battle Droid]

Originally posted by TheXev:

When Windows 10 Redstone was released, it introduced a strange bug into PA that caused the
Start menu to appear over the game even if it was set to full screen. Sometimes the start bar wouldn't show, but if you clicked in the lower area of the screen the Start menu would respond.

The devs implemented a fix for this issue and the result is the strangness you experiance now. I don't like it, and I never upgraded to Redstone so I never experianced the Start menu issue... The devs fix seems half assed but the result is having to deal with this strangeness you have noticed.

I wish the game has a way to disable this fix so the screen would operate normally like it used to (I have an AMD video card btw, so I don't believe the strangeness is related to the installed video card).

Yeah I was worried this is more of an OS issue than anything. For the most part I'm happy with Windows 10, but it's things like this that just piss me the hell off. It's the little things, you know - they build up over time. I wish we had as much control over it as we did with Windows XP, but I suppose those days are behind us.

[murgh]

So you have the game on screen 1 and youtube on screen 2? Did you try what happens the other way around? My guess is this is a driver problem, perhaps up or downgrading the drivers would work?

[a B1 Battle Droid]

Originally posted by murgh:

So you have the game on screen 1 and youtube on screen 2? Did you try what happens the other way around? My guess is this is a driver problem, perhaps up or downgrading the drivers would work?

Yes I've actually tried swapping the monitors, it makes no difference. I don't think it's a driver issue either, I think it's more of a thing with Windows 10 because I never had this issue until I upgraded to it.

One thing I should mention though... Now when running the game in windowed mode, WITHOUT Borderless Gaming set to simulate fullscreen mode, suddenly I'm not getting the problem where before I could swear it happened regardless. This just seems so...inconsistant. Regardless of this game specifically though, the universal thing is I can never run fullscreen games of any kind without the secondary monitor lagging - that's why I prefer borderless windowed mode. Does anyone else have to deal with this kind of thing? And if so, are you also using windows 10?