libretro / libretro/RetroArch

GL drivers - Black screen on Windows when switching to full screen

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#14,477 5 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Description

This issue is similar to #14474 but it's different enough that i thought i'd open a separate issue. But feel free to close this if you think it's the same thing...

Switching between full screen and windowed mode (by pressing the F key for example) will make the entire screen go black for roughly 2 seconds. There's no window bars or mouse cursor, nothing at all, just 100% black screen. This happens on Windows 10 with both the 1.11.1 and 1.11.0 stable releases, and the latest nightly build.

Apart from this happening on Windows 10 instead of MacOS Ventura, the other differences to #14474 are:

  1. It's not a permanent black screen, it only lasts 2-ish seconds.
  2. It only effects switching between full screen, so opening up RA in a minimised window doesn't show a black screen.
  3. Switching between full screen and a minimised window will actually work ok, apart from the temporary black screen.
  4. RetroArch will correctly re-launch in full screen if it was previously set to full screen.
  5. The black screen also appears for 2 seconds when either running or closing a game while in full screen (using any core).

It's the GL, GLcore and GL1 video drivers that are causing this issue. All of the other non-GL based drivers work totally fine, and it doesn't happen with 1.10.3.

I'm using the latest 517.48 Nvidia drivers btw.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Reproduce the transition on Windows 10 using the GL, GLcore, and GL1 video drivers, comparing 1.10.3 with 1.11.x and the nightly build. First inspect the fullscreen and game launch/close paths for changes affecting these drivers. Done means fullscreen switching and game launch or close no longer produce the roughly two-second black screen, while non-GL drivers remain unaffected.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
c
Domain
computer-graphics, frontend
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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