CoH on top - Alt Tab

[Izuela]

Windows 10. Playing CoH in full screen.

 

I'm having problems alt tabbing to other things while playing the game. CoH more often then not (but not always) stubbornly remains on top. Although the keyboard now treats whatever I tried to tab to as the active window. Usually (but not always) I can work around it  by ctrl-alt-delete opening the tank manager and alt tabbing to that first before going somewhere else. But every now and then that doesn't work either and even task manager is hidden. Is there some setting I can change so my computer stops trying to force CoH to cover all the things?

[EmmySky]

My computer is a toaster and most days if I alt+tab it crashes BUT sometimes pushing the windows key to force the taskbar to visible then selecting the window I want from the taskbar instead of using alt+tab will give me results.  

[Izuela]

On 6/3/2020 at 9:36 AM, EmmySky said:

My computer is a toaster and most days if I alt+tab it crashes BUT sometimes pushing the windows key to force the taskbar to visible then selecting the window I want from the taskbar instead of using alt+tab will give me results.  

Windows key trick does not work for me. CoH pops back on top as soon as I let go. I also don't have any crashing problems from alt tabbing.

[Seigmoraig]

@Izuela

Change the Screen/UI Resolution in the Graphics and Audio setting to "Borderless" instead of "1920 x 1080 (Desktop)" that should do the trick

[Izuela]

I can't do borderless. I keep accidentally grabbing the edge.

[Seigmoraig]

4 hours ago, Izuela said:

I can't do borderless. I keep accidentally grabbing the edge.

That's weird, Borderless means there is no edge... I have 2 monitors and no matter how hard i try, there is no way that I can grab the edge of my game. In Windowed you can grab it but you shouldn't be able to in Borderless

[GM Tock]

If you have a multiple monitor setup, that might happen depending on the screen layout.

 

Borderless is still Windowed mode, it just means the Windows "chrome" including the boundaries, title bar and window control buttons (minimize, toggle and close) are gone.  It's a fix mostly for modern "High DPI" monitors that cause issues when Fullscreen Mode means driver crashes or redraw glitching (mouse moves 1/4 the way down the screen, but is clicking tray buttons in the bottom right instead of the map window your mouse arrow is actually hovering over).  Windowed and Borderless modes are best for multitasking use while playing.  Using ALT-TAB or mousing away from the game and using the taskbar still has a slight lag to it, but it's not huge.  This does mean Windows doesn't give up any Video RAM and there's a slight performance hit to gameplay to pull this off.

 

Fullscreen mode is what the OP describes: Windows UI is not as accessible, and the Game UI takes center stage.  This comes with a slight performance increase if it works, as Windows elements take less memory if the game is 100% in focus, mostly realized as a boost to FPS.  The price includes what is mentioned above (HighDPI fail) as well as a laggy delay when using ALT-TAB to get out of Fullscreen and back to Windows.  For "multibox" play, Fullscreen is detrimental as the lag in switching between fullscreen clients is considerable.