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Borderless fullscreen & UI Scaling options

Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2025 12:53 pm
by MeduSalem
As the title says, consider implementing a proper borderless fullscreen mode.

I am using a multimonitor setup and the default fullscreen mode is terrible because every time the window focus changes by either clicking outside the Factorio window or back into the Factorio window it causes an annoying black screen flickering. That is why I am not using fullscreen mode on my multimonitor setup because it is horrible to endure.

Instead I am using the windowed mode for years already. In the past the windowed mode was okay, but ever since a lot of the UI has been redone for 2.0 and Space Age the UI scaling has become a big issue with the default values. With windowed mode the title bar + windows task bar take so much away from the vertical screen space that on 1920x1080 the default 100% UI scaling results in cutting off the bottom of many of the taller UI panels and you can never read the entire information there since some of UI panels cannot be vertically scrolled either (like the side bar panel). And the next smaller scaling of 75% makes the text so tiny (like 5-6 pixel tall) that it is near to unreadable or at least strains the eyes such that your brain hurts after a while.

The more annoying part about the scaling is that I tried to enter a custom scaling like 85% or 90% which resolves a lot of the vertical UI cutoff, but welp... despite there being a number field you can manually enter numbers it does not work. It automatically resets to either 75% or 100% because ingame the setting does not allow anything in between. So basically the number field is just a teaser and pointless because it does not work from ingame like one would expect it.

Anyway, in the meantime I manually edited the config files and set a custom scale to my liking (90% currently which accounts for most of the titlebar & taskbar height), but it should work from the ingame options too if you already use a number field there. At least I remember it used to work in the past like that.

Re: Borderless fullscreen & UI Scaling options

Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2025 4:15 pm
by Klonan
Can you share some screenshots of the issues you have?

The GUI should behave nicely even with 125% at 1080p, most of the time I try to ensure they even work up to 150%

Hearing that its not working even at 100% in a normal window is surprising and odd.

Re: Borderless fullscreen & UI Scaling options

Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2025 5:25 pm
by Tertius
MeduSalem wrote: Tue Jul 29, 2025 12:53 pm I am using a multimonitor setup and the default fullscreen mode is terrible because every time the window focus changes by either clicking outside the Factorio window or back into the Factorio window it causes an annoying black screen flickering. That is why I am not using fullscreen mode on my multimonitor setup because it is horrible to endure.
From own experience, this flicker can be caused by Windows changing the refresh rate during such a switch. Make sure the Windows desktop has the same refresh rate as Factorio, and both monitors also have the same refresh rate. If this is the case, there should be no flicker. Also check Windows settings System > Display > Advanced Display > Dynamic refresh rate. Default is on, try what happens if you switch it off (after you made sure every monitor and Factorio has the same rate).

Re: Borderless fullscreen & UI Scaling options

Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2025 6:57 pm
by MeduSalem
Klonan wrote: Tue Jul 29, 2025 4:15 pm Can you share some screenshots of the issues you have?

The GUI should behave nicely even with 125% at 1080p, most of the time I try to ensure they even work up to 150%

Hearing that its not working even at 100% in a normal window is surprising and odd.
Ah, I just found out in the meantime that one can actually scroll "tooltips" by holding Shift. I never knew one can actually do that. I only found out an hour ago by browsing the keyboard shortcuts while looking for something else and stumbling across the entry by accident. One would think by playing the game for soooo looong I would know, but I really didn't because there is no reference anywhere else but inside the keyboard shortcuts that one can scroll tooltips.

Anyway, 100% UI for 1080 windowed mode is "okayish" then, even if it would be nicer not to have to scroll tooltips as much (hence why I might still leave UI scale at 90%), but I figure it is an acceptable compromise when in windowed mode.

Also 125% on 1080p... I just looked at that out of curiosity. Are you sure about that behaving nicely? The center bottom toolbar actually overlaps the right tooltips then and even scrolling the tooltip won't make everything readable because the center bottom toolbar is in the way. ^^
125
Tertius wrote: Tue Jul 29, 2025 5:25 pm From own experience, this flicker can be caused by Windows changing the refresh rate during such a switch. Make sure the Windows desktop has the same refresh rate as Factorio, and both monitors also have the same refresh rate. If this is the case, there should be no flicker. Also check Windows settings System > Display > Advanced Display > Dynamic refresh rate. Default is on, try what happens if you switch it off (after you made sure every monitor and Factorio has the same rate).
I also know that with some fullscreen games tabbing out of the window or changing focus between displays usually causes a black flicker for a split second. Normal there.

Hence why I usually set games to use the borderless fullscreen mode if they have that because then there usually never happens a flicker when changing focus between displays.

The only way to avoid it for Factorio is using the windowed mode. Then there is no flicker.

Anyway, my displays are a bit dated from 2014 and incapable of dynamic refresh rates. Also both are set to 60 Hz. ^^
Also some games I even purposely limit to 30fps with their ingame settings or with the Nvidia driver setting to go easier on the graphics card and no flicker when changing window focus. I don't use any FPS limiter for Factorio though because usually it is not that hard on the GPU, so the standard 60fps apply.