Zomboid forces highest refresh rate

[Modin]

If for some reason someone would like for their monitor to be used at a lower refresh rate than the native one (say 120hz instead of 144hz), and sets it accordingly in windows settings, upon launching Zomboid the setting will revert back to the highest possible value (144hz in my example).

 

I've tested it with other games and they all comply with windows. Zomboid is the only one that's disobeying and stubbornly changing the monitor's refresh rate. This causes time-consuming black screens when you launch Zomboid or attempt to alt tab out of it or back into it since the system has to constantly change the refresh rate.

 

The issue is only a problem in fullscreen - borderless windowed fixes it.

 

Edit: after attempting to play with my refresh rate, after a reboot Zomboid starting behaving oddly - glitchy green/purple images when launching and alt-tabbing, and only running at 72 fps for some reason. I could fix the issue by changing my refresh rate to 165 and back to 170 in windows, before restarting the game.

Edited June 30, 2022 by Modin

[EnigmaGrey]

Unless vsync is enabled, it'd just run at whatever hz was last set. I don't know if LWJGL can actually tell what Hz is set inside Windows, as all it does is get a list of available resolutions/hz combos from the driver directly.

 

You could work around this by changing it in Options.ini found in %UserProfile%\Zomboid, turning on vsync, or making the change in-game before changing it in WIndows.

[Modin]

I have vsync disabled.

 

My monitor is 170hz baseline. If I set windows to 170hz and launch the game, everything works beautifully.

 

If I set windows to 144hz and launch the game in fullscreen, I get a temporary blackscreen while my monitor is changing its refresh rate, and then the game runs with my monitor at 170hz. If I alt-tab, the black screen happens again and my monitor goes back to 144hz. If I alt-tab back in, black screen, monitor goes to 170hz.

 

The expected behavior is that Zomboid would detect that the refresh rate is set to 144hz with the help of windows or graphics drivers, not sure, and then not touch the refresh rate. At least, that's what every other game installed on my PC does, indie or triple A, fullscreen or no. Not sure how they do it, but they do it.

 

There is no way to change the monitor's refresh rate in-game, and I didn't find a line for it in Options.ini.

 

You can change the framerate, yes, but that's not what I'm talking about here - I'm not trying to limit the framerate - that can easily be done in the options, NVCP, or RTSS. I'm trying to make Zomboid comply with windows and not change the monitor's refresh rate every time it's displaying in fullscreen.

 

By the way - this is not a problem for me, I have no reason to set my monitor to anything lower than 170hz. But I know some people do and apparently this causes problems for them. And all the other games I have work fine there, so I'm thinking you guys can somehow fix this.

 

It's not insanely problematic for sure, but maybe the solution is pretty easy to implement as well? Just making sure you guys at least know about this!

Edited June 30, 2022 by Modin

[EnigmaGrey]

The framerate is the hz the game runs at.

 

i don’t think the game has the ability to do this. 
 

Still, I’ll try it on my 244 hz monitor.

[EnigmaGrey]

Okay, went through the documentation and it seems I'm wrong.

 

Currently, the way it's set up is the windowing library we use picks the "best" settings from a list provided to the driver and applies them. So that's why it's ignoring the Windows settings. (FPS in-game has nothing do with this, either). It's possible we can change this behavior and let it manually be specified, at the very least, if not have it automatically pulled from Windows. Forwarded to the rest of the team.

 

Beard also suggests checking that your GPU settings don't specify a different Hz than you've set in Windows, as it may be the source of the issues you describe when alt+tabbing. We couldn't reproduce this, however. 

[NeonScreams]

Apologies for the Necro as a difficult google search led me to this post, which details exactly the same issue I've been combatting for several days. I can reproduce and provide any logs, DXDIAG or whatever is needed. Including a cellphone recording of the monitor exhibiting the behavior.

 

I do want to state this is a massive issue for me, ever since I began streaming Zomboid. I specify streaming and not playing, as at the time of this post I have a bit over 3750 hours spent playing PZ as I might like it a bit. ( ~.o ); But any time I change the active monitor to another monitor, it causes that refresh rate change. Now you'd think I could just set the monitor to its maximum refresh rate of 165Hz and move on. But due to the streaming software listening to the refresh rate, I need them all in G-Sync with each other (3 monitors, 1 PC setup) tuned to divisibles of 60. In this instance 60, 120 & 120. Otherwise the encoder has to work overtime with the weird refresh rate on 1 monitor.

 

As to why it's an issue- When I'm streaming and playing PZ, I often have to click on another monitor to adjust music, scenes, check out users for bot activity, open and close web pages etc., but I'm jumping back to PZ while those alternate apps are loading & changing their states. Essentially I'm seeing most of my field of view (curved 32") flash, go black, flash, go to PZ, flash, go black, flash.. as often as several times a minute for hours of streaming. It's enough that I've told viewers I can't stream PZ until I've managed to resolve this.. only to learn there's nothing I can do about it.

 

And it's not the end of the world.

 

If your team has any solution, I would be eternally grateful. I'm comfortable making changes in .json's and .bat files. Whatever is needed to get a work around in place. In the meantime, I have been able to run PZ in Windowed Mode *shudder* but it's not a long term solution due to the encoder leaving a weird black strip at the bottom of the screen or stretching the game to 16:9 when it's missing the bottom 40 pixels (1440p). Well.. 1400 I guess. It just looks bad to viewers for a game I love so much. 

 

But anyway; thanks for all you do. 

 

Edit: Now that I've slept and thought about it, this may need to move up the Bug-List before the v42 big day. PZ will have a lot of hype and new viewers to the streams. And I can't be the only one that single PC streams with a refresh rate below the max, right? 

Edited August 16, 2023 by NeonScreams
Edit 2: Clarifying wording about moving window vs changing to 2nd monitor

[locker27]

having a very similar issue as neonscreams, the only difference is my monitor is half-broken on 144hz, and only runs 100% fine on 60hz. ive been able to set my refresh rate in my other games but it seems project zomboid is the only other game i have without this option? would be very helpful to set it to 60hz as borderless windowed gets very stuttery/screen teary.

[mpzambee]

I and a friend are both having this exact same problem. We have AOC monitors. We set our refresh rates to 144 Hz in Windows, and, when we start Project Zomboid, it sets the refresh rate to 60 Hz. I have tried a variety of things to get this to not happen, and, no matter what I do, I cannot stop Zomboid from forcing the refresh rate to 60 Hz, and this persists after closing the game, requiring us to manually set the refresh rate back to 144 Hz after we finish playing Zomboid.

Given that this problem was identified over a year ago, and nothing has been done about it, I guess it's safe to say that this is so rare or niche of an issue that it's not worth fixing when there are so many other much more important and pressing things to do for the next big update? I'm not angry or anything, just, you know, some update about the situation would be cool.

[Beard]

The game itself would not have the ability to lock the monitor refresh rate to anything. I do have not seen any game that would have any reason to do that.
The issue would most likely be the Windows settings or Freesync / Gsync lowering the refresh rate. Or even the graphics control panel or other graphic control applications settings the refresh rate lower.

You may test that theory with the monitors connected to different computers, or having your own computer Windows reinstalled, that would confirm if it is a Windows or a Monitor specific issue.