http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=38800

Anyone try this yet? Curious if its worth downloading.

If this actually works, it is the greatest mod ever made. I'll try it right now and let you know what I think.

Okay, it works. Um.

:intergalactic:
:flamethrower:
:cryvaultboy:
:celebration:
:hubbahubba:
:wink_smile:

How did you find this? How is this not more popular? I love you.

By works, are you saying it actually does improve performance? I'd be deeply curious to know why running in a window should outperform running it in full screen.

Ha, I just saw this browsing recent updates on tesnexus, and was curious since I'm not exactly sure what it's meant to accomplish. Will try it out real quick.

As far as I know using Alt+Tab while playing Oblivion works perfectly, it only crashes if you use the OBGE2.dll plugin.

Well, I use OBGE and with this I was able to alt-tab just fine. Of course I had to play with the taskbar blocking the bottom part of the screen, which isn't too bad I guess. Though I don't understand reports of this mod improving performance--as far as I can tell my game runs the same as before. I mean, maybe it's an improvement on regular windowed mode, I don't know. It did give me the chance to finally mess with processor priority and affinity for Oblivion.exe, but that didn't seem to do anything anyway.

So...yeah, you can alt-tab. Am I missing something, is there some other reason that this is awesome? I guess being able to alt-tab isn't that important to me really.

I would guess it could come in useful as a debugging tool, anyone wanting to know how much RAM Oblivion is using for instance, but otherwise I can't see much use for it.

Also the CPU stuff I mentioned I read about http://preventcrashesinoblivion.page.tl/Change-core-affinity-and-priority.htm. But like I said it didn't seem to do anything, who knows if it actually has any effect.

Hmm... I've been using some kind of fake fullscreen window-mode for some time now, by just changing some oblivion.ini values :rolleyes:

iLocation Y=-24
iLocation X=-2
bFull Screen=0
iSize W=1440
iSize H=900

The iLocation variables determine the position of the window, so you have to set them to negative values to hide the bars and voila fake fullscreen without a seperate .exe or other stuff :thumbsup:

I'm not sure how the rest of you are so lucky, but I've never been able to alt-tab out of my game without it freezing. :unsure: So are there performance benefits, or is it just for the sake of multitasking?

That is my experience as well.

As mentioned, that's likely due to OBGE. I was able to alt-tab fine without it crashing up until I installed OBGEv2.

But yeah, I guess the main benefit is multitasking now that this mod can get around that. I don't imagine I'll be using it much, but it's pretty nice someone was able to make it work.

You don't need a separate app to run Oblivion in windowed mode. Just modify the viewport size and position in the INI and turn off fullscreen. The game should run fine even with OBGE enabled.

PS: Running the game in windowed mode will reduce performance a bit, as the OS has to blit the window (which adds overhead).

I've never been able to alt-tab without the game crashing shortly after returning to it, even before OBGE. That's not important to me though, I don't tend to want to swap windows while gaming anyway. I was intrigued by the claims of performance improvement but I hesitate to download an untrusted EXE file.

I can't imagine any way it would provide a performance increase, and it didn't do so for me when I tried it. Like shadeMe said if anything it will slow things down, and when I first ran it and loaded a game it was choppy. You can let your curiosity die!

My curiosity won't die, but my security paranoia is keeping it in check.

The http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16001/http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=41381 versions have been around since April and seem overall positively received. This is just a port so I suppose it's trustworthy. Also intrigued by the claims of improved performance, if it's real how does it happen? If it's not, why are so many people experiencing the placebo effect? o.o

Xp would always crash when I tried to alt-tab

Windows 7 I can do it little more oiten

the trick to alt-tab with oblvion from my exprience, launch taskmanager first, then launch game, from in game bring up the main menu first, then the console, then alt-tab,

To those asking about the supposed performance improvements: I saw this file when it first went up and there was a bit about possibly improving performance in it, along with an explanation, though I don't know enough about how Oblivion's engine works to know if it's BS or not, I suspect OBGE modders would know...

Basically it claimed that playing in windowed mode forced a lower quality or simple mode for a handful of graphics settings that either are not available to change normally, or that it overrides certain values just by virtue of being in windowed mode. So this would presumably be a performance increase at the cost of some unknown graphical detail.

Seeing as the author was quite vague about it in the first place, and has since removed the claim, it seems unlikely.

Edit: Also, I think the "fix" here is for the time delay on ALT+TAB switches from non-windowed mode, and support for non-standard resolutions in fullscreen (for those who are not .ini file capable).

FYI, though, it does what it says it does and comes up as completely safe and clean on all my virus scans.

I was always under the impression that running in windowed mode increased stability. Im curious if this mod would help prevent any type of ctd issues? As others have mentioned, its also been my experience that oblivion tends to run a bit more sluggish in window mode. Plus doesn't window mode make vsync turn off?

Yeah there may be a performance increase because of those few disabled settings, I don't know how that works in Oblivion though. In Valve games it disables certain aspects of lighting IIRC, but I don't remember seeing a difference anyway. BUT there would also be a performance decrease because it's in windowed mode, when you're in windowed mode it keeps everything like your desktop and your other programs ready to go and loaded. The decrease would likely be more significant than the increase.

But none of that matters because the real point of this is so you can alt tab instantly it is not a performance tool and if it was intended to be it likely has a negative effect.