Fullscreen has terrible performance, windowed mode is fine.

[JuggernautOfWar]

When I run the game in fullscreen mode I am locked at 14 FPS while loaded into a map, and only 20 FPS at the main menu. However as soon as I switch to windowed mode (where I can see the Windows taskbar etc) I get a solid 144 FPS even at max settings. What is going on here? This never used to be a problem when I last played this many months ago.

I have a GTX 970M in my laptop, and it is selected as the preferred rendering device in the Nvidia control panel.

[ChunkHunter]

Simple solution - Run in windowed mode...

[JuggernautOfWar]

Originally posted by ChunkHunter:

Simple solution - Run in windowed mode...

Not much of a solution when I don't want to run in windowed mode. The mouse cursor isn't locked to the window, the taskbar is visible unless I manually hide it each time I start the game, and I get less screen real estate for the game while in windowed mode.

Unless of course there is a borderless windowed mode option somewhere I'm missing. Is there?

[ChunkHunter]

Sorry - I was being facaetious - should have put a smiley in there :)

Is it maybe a problem with your screen resolution and graphics options all set to max?
I don't have any problems on my 1920x1080 screen running full screen - but I have adjusted my graphics settings to 2x anti-aliasing, reflection off, and shaders and textures at medium.

[JuggernautOfWar]

Just for testing purposes I tried setting everything to the lowest settings including the smallest 16:9 resolution, and I got the exact same performance limitations in fullscreen mode. As soon as I press alt+enter to switch to windowed mode my framerate immediately holds at 144 FPS on any settings, but it always stays at 14 FPS in fullscreen on any settings.

[Thork]

Seems really strange. I get about the same performance fullscreen and windowed. Not like graphics was the limiting factor for me in this game anyway.
Just out of curiosity:
What OS are you running and what do you use to meassure FPS?
Do you actually notice a difference?

[JuggernautOfWar]

Originally posted by Thork:

Seems really strange. I get about the same performance fullscreen and windowed. Not like graphics was the limiting factor for me in this game anyway.
Just out of curiosity:
What OS are you running and what do you use to meassure FPS?
Do you actually notice a difference?

Windows 10 x64, and I use the built-in Steam overlay feature to measure FPS in this case.

I definitely notice the difference. I haven't been playing the past few days despite wanting to get back into the game. At 14 FPS it's just not enjoyable. It's not a graphics limitation since I get the same performance when set to 800x600 and lowest settings. As soon as I switch to windowed mode (where I can see the taskbar etc) it jumps up to a solid 144 FPS.

When at the main menu (just a 2D background with some text) I get a similar but slightly different experience. When in fullscreen mode it's locked at 20 FPS, but when I switch to windowed mode it's immediately bumped up to 144 FPS. Clearly there is something wrong here. No idea why the game is struggling so much in fullscreen mode.

[Thork]

Well, there are not many window-specific settings. Besides upgrading your drivers (and check/experiment with driver settings themselves like fex. v-sync), you should probably write to Urban Games support directly to let them know (most likely they read this anyway).
I've also seen a few reports on performance for the newest Beta. If you are using that, you could try switching to the stable build. Don't really have other useful recommendations, Good luck.

[ChunkHunter]

Gut feeling is it's something with the graphics card/driver.

I can't think of any reason why the game would behave differently because of different screen resolutions - in fact by changing your screen resolutions and still experiencing the same problem you've effectively demonstrated that it doesn't.