alt+tab makes blackscreen randomly last long

[Vardahtoh]

Anyone else having this problem. It's like 2/6 times randomly. I alt tab or change settings from full screen to windows, and the black screen can last between 1-5 minutes. I find if I hit windows key or do multiple alt tabs it sometimes help to switch off black screen.

This is the only game this happens with. Here are my specs so it's not a "it's your graphics card (insert pc parts here) issue".

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3960X CPU @ 3.30GHz (12 CPUs), ~3.3GHz

Memory: 32768MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 32746MB RAM
Page File: 6480MB used, 28311MB available

DirectX Version: DirectX 11
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580
Dedicated Memory: 3018 MB
Shared Memory: 1077 MB
Current Mode: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz)

Monitor Model: ASUS VG278

Device Name: G510 Gaming Keyboard

Mouse: Razer Naga Epic

Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.130801-1533)

http://s116.photobucket.com/user/xXx...ml?sort=3&o=10

[Raist]

It actually may be your hardware to some degree. It happens at different speeds between my two systems--an i7 laptop with an nVidia 670 series GPU and a C2D PC with an ATI 5800 series GPU.

I'm just glad it works without crashing the game... very uncharacteristic of SE to allow us to be able to alt-tab from their stuff without using a third-party tool. They're rendering methods in general are notorious for not getting along with anything that causes their game to loose focus.

We may not see any improvement until we move to a higher level of DirectX. Hopefully this will allow it to be more fully integrated with WDM (and finally resolve the hardware cursor issues Vista users are still having, among other longstanding issues).

[Vardahtoh]

It actually may be your hardware to some degree. It happens at different speeds between my two systems--an i7 laptop with an nVidia 670 series GPU and a C2D PC with an ATI 5800 series GPU.

I'm just glad it works without crashing the game... very uncharacteristic of SE to allow us to be able to alt-tab from their stuff without using a third-party tool. They're rendering methods in general are notorious for not getting along with anything that causes their game to loose focus.

We may not see any improvement until we move to a higher level of DirectX. Hopefully this will allow it to be more fully integrated with WDM (and finally resolve the hardware cursor issues Vista users are still having, among other longstanding issues).

If it was a hardware issue, I'm sure I would have seen other issues with the many other games I have played throughout the year in a half since I built this pc (starting with tera during nexus event).

Alt+tab is an os command and not a command within the game. The shell in the OS is telling the program to be minimized no matter what state it is in, as it switches to the next program on the task bar. If SE programmed the app to complain in rendering during the OS alt+tab command, then I would just call it bad UI programming of not allowing an operating system to alt+tab throughout a program.

You said it happens at different speeds on both your systems. Are they using different OS types?

[Raist]

Both systems are at Win8 now and at the same service level with the same features removed via DSIM, and the same security and version level installed there as well. Performance wise, the PC runs about 40-80 FPS, while the laptop is running about 30-60. The PC switches faster while the laptop switches considerably slower.

It's not always so cut and dry as things just being an OS level command--like you said, you can have bad programming. For instance, various elements can enter a device lost state (input device, sound, display), and if the exceptions aren't handled properly, it can have all kinds of unwanted side effects--data corruption, loss of functionality, or a flat out crash even. So they can actually programmatically prevent (or otherwise discourage) players from alt-tab'ing in various ways.

Whatever they are doing here seems to be handled more efficiently on one system than the other. May be purely due to differences in GPU design, or maybe things like hard drives and bus speeds (PC is much faster on both counts)... who knows. All I can say is that on my PC, it's near instant...at worst like a second of lag like its reloading buffers or something. But on the laptop it's a definite pause that is very annoying... sometimes wonder if it isn't about to crash to desktop. I actually shipped my laptop back to California for them to check it out because I was completely loosing my screen for long pauses like that--thought I had a cable shorting or maybe the GPU needed to be re-flowed. But, they tried hammering the piss out of it for a while with Furmark and such (was gone nearly 3 weeks), and couldn't replicate it. They made sure my BIOS, firmwares, and drivers were up to date and sent it back. Haven't had the scary minute+ blackouts since, but it still does the long pause when dropping from full screen to window.

You're probly on target with the "bad UI programming" idea. We've surely seen this in effect with XI... they eventually fixed some critical things in that game's UI after what, a decade of complaints? Sometimes I wonder if it isn't more intentionally borked than shoddy programming decisions. They certainly don't like changing things that are "working as intended".

Wonder if we'd get an official response in the bug report section... or if they'd ignore us for years again.

[RaineMagus]

Vardahtoh,

--I'm guessing there's no errors in the Windows Event Log and this isn't a TDR.


If it's not a TDR, then the blackscreens you're describing sounds like they may just be the monitor taking longer than expected to re-sync during a screen-mode / resolution change.

[*This exact situation happened on my Dell U3014 'until' I switched to DP, where the monitor would blank for a minute unless I flipped the power off/on*]


My gut reaction was going to be suggesting that you try plugging the monitor in using DisplayPort instead of DVI-D ... yet it looks like the screen doesn't take DP, so that's off the table. Only other thing I can think of is playing with CRU (ToastyX's Custom Resolution Utility) and changing settings to lower your pixel clock 'slightly', then seeing if this reduces or eliminates the times that the display blanks abnormally long.

--Powercycling the monitor during a blackscreen does nothing? (if it doesn't do anything, don't bother with the above)


Also, if you've used the NVidia ControlPanel to Overclock your panel, remove those settings. Without registry editing the custom resolutions applied through the NVidia CP won't be used in games (causing a swap to the higher refresh on the desktop only).


Since it happens on alt-tab / focus loss, D3D device loss, display-mode change, etc.. Have you tried putting the game in borderless windowed mode instead?

-If you haven't, then that's probably the easiest workaround .. provided that you're not playing in Stereo3D and you don't mind not having the engine's presentation truly synced to vsync (wouldn't matter much with a 120hz screen anyway, still should be silky smooth).

[Vardahtoh]

Vardahtoh,

--I'm guessing there's no errors in the Windows Event Log and this isn't a TDR.


If it's not a TDR, then the blackscreens you're describing sounds like they may just be the monitor taking longer than expected to re-sync during a screen-mode / resolution change.

[*This exact situation happened on my Dell U3014 'until' I switched to DP, where the monitor would blank for a minute unless I flipped the power off/on*]


My gut reaction was going to be suggesting that you try plugging the monitor in using DisplayPort instead of DVI-D ... yet it looks like the screen doesn't take DP, so that's off the table. Only other thing I can think of is playing with CRU (ToastyX's Custom Resolution Utility) and changing settings to lower your pixel clock 'slightly', then seeing if this reduces or eliminates the times that the display blanks abnormally long.

--Powercycling the monitor during a blackscreen does nothing? (if it doesn't do anything, don't bother with the above)


Also, if you've used the NVidia ControlPanel to Overclock your panel, remove those settings. Without registry editing the custom resolutions applied through the NVidia CP won't be used in games (causing a swap to the higher refresh on the desktop only).


Since it happens on alt-tab / focus loss, D3D device loss, display-mode change, etc.. Have you tried putting the game in borderless windowed mode instead?

-If you haven't, then that's probably the easiest workaround .. provided that you're not playing in Stereo3D and you don't mind not having the engine's presentation truly synced to vsync (wouldn't matter much with a 120hz screen anyway, still should be silky smooth).

Thanks for the intelligent reply.

Two answer your last question, yes I have changed settings to borderless, although this technically isn't full screen (even though it looks like it). The only problem with this, is the mumble names don't appear on the game. But there is no black screen during alt tab, I can see it running smoothly in the background.

I haven't tried turning the monitor off/on, but I will see if that fixes the problem next time it happens.

[Vardahtoh]

I changed the in-game full screen resolution settings to match what the resolution settings were for desktop (1920/1080 (60Hz)), and this appears to have fixed the problem.

[Furlamseere]

It seems that there have not been any further posts about this concern being an ongoing issue. Because of this, we are considering it to be resolved. If this does continue to be a concern, please create another thread to further discuss resolutions or contact the Support Center at support.na.square-enix.com for assistance.

- Furlamseere