Newcomer / Intro WINDOWED, BORDERLESS, FULLSCREEN - what's the difference..?

Windowed mean the game runs in a window like any other program on your desktop. Borderless is just windowed without a border.

Fullscreen means it takes over the whole display.

Windowed means you can move it around and see whatever else you want on the desktop. Graphically it may be harder on your system to run a game inside a window while showing the desktop at the same time.
 
When on certain resolutions, it's better for me to use 'borderless' instead of 'fullscreen', because otherwise it confuses my monitor's 'black stabilizer' (colors become all faded).
 
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When on certain resolutions, it's better for me to use 'borderless' instead of 'fullscreen', because otherwise it confuses my monitor 'black stabilizer' (colors become all faded).
That's interesting. I suppose you're playing the game in some other resolution than the monitor's native?
If you have an nVidia card, right-click on the desktop and open the "nVidia control panel"
Select "Adjust desktop size and position" and switch the "perform scaling on:" option from "Display" to "GPU".
Then go to "Adjust desktop colour settings" tab and tick the "Override to reference mode" box.

If that doesn't help, you should reinstall the GPU drivers. This is not a standard behaviour.

If you have an AMD GPU, there are similar options, but both of my rigs currently have nVidia GPUs installed so I can't give you an exact walkthrough from the top of my head.
 
Not wanting to confuse the issue but just for info:

A while back I stopped using TCE as that needed to be used as an overlay so required borderless - trouble was Elite in borderless ran my GPU at 100% all the time (this is long before Oddity) - so I was getting toasty feet. ;) Fullscreen showed none of that, even on the most graphic intense situation (the main menu!) my GPU load was never that high.

I believe they fixed it now (have not checked) and I have no idea why it should have been like that.


BTW - TCE means Trade Computer Extension MkII as per:




BTW - BTW means by the way ... ;)
 
I run in Windowed mode (1600x900 on a native large screen 1920x1080 screen) on a Ryzen 5 1600 with a humble 1650 Super 4GB GPU. All settings are on High or Ultra with SMAA (in game). I also add a bunch of additional quality settings using Nvidia Control Panel.

I have open a browser (to use the forum like now) with a number of tabs (like Coriolis and Inara and ED Wiki etc), Task Manager (to keep an eye on Ram usage etc), Speccy (to see some temps), MSI afterburner (to better control my GPU fan), and a software i use for recording for youtube that i just use to display an FPS counter currently (ED is not on my current list of let's plays yet).

Overall i am very happy with the performance of EDH on my humble setup even at high settings that look great and give decent performance (i cap at 60 fps max).

In terms of the differences between the game display modes, it is as others have said, and basically it will boil down that Full Screen will give you the best performance if playing at native resolution, which is often the case for most games.
 
That's interesting. I suppose you're playing the game in some other resolution than the monitor's native?
If you have an nVidia card, right-click on the desktop and open the "nVidia control panel"
Select "Adjust desktop size and position" and switch the "perform scaling on:" option from "Display" to "GPU".
Then go to "Adjust desktop colour settings" tab and tick the "Override to reference mode" box.

If that doesn't help, you should reinstall the GPU drivers. This is not a standard behaviour.

If you have an AMD GPU, there are similar options, but both of my rigs currently have nVidia GPUs installed so I can't give you an exact walkthrough from the top of my head.
Yes, exactly, I used to play the game in 1080p while my monitor is 4K (LG brand). It seems that this monitor fails to recalculate 'black stabilization' when switching its resolution on-the-fly.

Thanks a lot for the advices. I'll try that and let you know if it worked. 🙏

Also, since patch 9's round of optimizations, I can now run the game in 4K (FSS ON) Fullscreen-mode, so I don't have this problem anymore, hehe.
 
When I run the game in Fullscreen, the game lets say 'Alt-tabs' back to desktop.
This happens every 20mins at 6mins post the hour, 26 & 46 without fail. I disable any AVG but it still occurs (terrible when approaching to land, or flying through hyperspace or wandering around a settlement - the only thing that has fixed this is playing in Borderless or Windowed.

I would like to play Fullscreen but for now borderless is the way.
 
When on certain resolutions, it's better for me to use 'borderless' instead of 'fullscreen', because otherwise it confuses my monitor 'black stabilizer' (colors become all faded).
Just turn all that ((censored)) off. All automatic adjustments and "enhancements" done by a display or TV are utterly evil.

(Some time ago I purchased a 4k TV for the PS5, and it was utterly annoying having to go through literally a dozen different settings and turn them all off in order for the output to remain static and watchable. Every single automatic "enhancement" made by the TV either made the picture look a lot worse, or was utterly annoying, such as the brightness of the picture going up and down in a very annoying manner. The "game mode" of the TV is supposed to not do any of that, but it didn't help. Cheap TV, you get what you pay for, I suppose.)
 
What are the pros and cons of playing with these settings...?
I like to play in a window so I can keep some notepads and terminals and chat and such visible to the edges. My monitor is 2560x1440 and the game window 1920x1080. But I tried em all and that's what yo should do is try em all.

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I run borderless because EDO materials helper doesn't work properly in full-screen.
Borderless looks the same as full screen.
Also it's easier to alt-tab back to the desktop, or a website like Inara.
 
What are the pros and cons of playing with these settings...?
When I ran bordlerless on Windows 11 it gave a slight translucency to the image so I could see the PC desktop (or other open apps) underneath. It's necessary to run Bordlerless for some 3rd party apps' overlays, like the Elite Observatory exobiology notifications or the Materials Helper highlighting of wishlist/irrelevant materials.
 
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