what is really happening in full screen mode?

[cyrfer]

Hi,
I've been trying to figure out what is the definition of "full screen mode". Is it simply a window with no border that is the same size as the desktop? Does the graphics card perform better than when you render to a window that is smaller than the desktop? Why would the performance be better? If so, are any special flags required to create such a window, on Windows? If I create the window myself, and give the handle to RenderWindow when creating the RenderWindow, does the RenderSystem need to be informed that the window is a full-screen window?
Thanks!

[lilezek]

What OS are you talking about?

In windows the direct draw driver makes your monitor not to draw anything but that the application is telling to draw, as far as I know.

About the performance, I think is the same. Maybe window mode (if both window and full screen are the same resolution) is a bit worse.

And if it is full screen you don't need to have any window because full screen doesn't need a window.

[cyrfer]

This response wasn't very helpful. I'm asking for help understanding what is full screen mode.

[jacmoe]

It's not windowed.

That's essentially what it is.
No cooperation, no syncing, no nothing.
Which is why it's usually faster.

[Kojack]

Full screen mode is able to change the resolution, colour mode and refresh rate of the screen, while windowed runs using the current desktop settings. It can take monitors a few seconds to adjust to new screen modes, which is why they tend to go black for a bit when you start or alt-tab a full screen app. Windowed mode apps don't have that delay.

A full screen mode app will lose it's device when it loses focus. If you have a dual monitor setup and you click the mouse on the monitor other than where a full screen app is running, the app will disappear until it has focus again. This got REALLY annoying for me in WOW years ago, until I discovered the setting for borderless maximised windowed mode (looks like full screen, but has the app/focus switching speed of windowed).

There's more full screen details in the directx sdk help files, going into stuff about swap chains, exclusive mode access, multihead issues, etc.

[Beauty]

Good description(s).

I added them to the wiki:
http://www.ogre3d.org/tikiwiki/-Full+Screen+mode
It's no nice lexicon page, but so the information is save and people can find it easily.

[reptor]

Beauty, thank you for your work on the ogre wiki.