How to run the Wine virtual desktop fullscreen?

Question

I have tried to run Age of Empires 2 with wine using the virtual desktop feature to emulate a higher resolution screen. The game runs and the virtual desktop is indeed working, but it is running in a window and I can't find a way to make the virtual desktop fullscreen! This is a problem because the OS bar/launcher/etc are still visible/accessible/active, which leads to loss of screen real estate and trouble when moving the cursor left (the ubuntu launcher shows).

I'd like to know if anyone knows how to run the virtual desktop in proper fullscreen. I know I could hide the launcher and OS bar to "simulate" a fullscreen look but I'd rather have it be actually fullscreen.

Thanks!

Solution 1

After some tweaking I managed to solve my problem. It seems this is a Unity related bug since the problem didn't persist under a different desktop.

To solve the issue I simply installed the lxde desktop environment and when I run the game there using the wine virtual desktop, no OS elements are visible so the full screen does work.

Solution 2

On my system, I have two monitors, but this works with just one monitor as well. All I had to do was set the virtual desktop size to the same resolution as my monitor (1920x1080). Find your screen resolution and set that to be the virtual desktop size.

I play Rocket League on Steam and set full-screen mode in-game, and it works perfectly well. The panels on my system (as seen in the screenshot on top) do not interfere at all and aren't there.

Comments

[Ivo Dimov]

Thanks for your reply! I have tried that before and it is not working. The virtual desktop is simply running in a window of the same size of my screen. The OS elements are still visible though. Here is the wine configuration and here is how the game looks. Also, ticking the "allow window manager to control the window" results in the same thing.

[AlwaysTalkingAboutMyDog]

Okay, hmm. Because your settings menu is correct (fully blue, not showing any panels), try starting Age of Empires 2 in windowed without border mode.

[Ivo Dimov]

Do you mean disabling the virtual desktop (fourth box)? Or disabling window manager integration (second and third box)? Disabling window manager integration doesn't solve it. Disabling virtual desktop allows me to run it fullscreen, but I need to do it using the virtual desktop in order to simulate a different screen resolution.

[AlwaysTalkingAboutMyDog]

Keep the virtual desktop running, but in AoE2's settings, (game settings), change to windowed without border mode. When you opened the wine cfg settings, it was practically full screen, yes? So if you run AoE2 not in full screen mode but in "windowed without border", it will be full screen through the emulation.

[Ivo Dimov]

Yes, the desktop runs in fullscreen as seen here. Once the game opens it turns into a window as seen here. I imagine this is because the game menu is of a fixed size (which is odd, since running the game without the virtual desktop scales the menu to occupy the whole screen).

[Ivo Dimov]

When I start an actual match the game becomes 1024x768 but the OS elements are still visible as seen here. Finally, when using Alt+click to drag the window it is possible to see that the game is actually running without decoration as seen here, but still won't occupy the full screen. This leads me to believe it is a wine bug and I won't be able to solve it anytime soon.. A bummer but this kind of stuff happens.

[AlwaysTalkingAboutMyDog]

I've looked online and it seems that AoE only has a "fake" fullscreen mode, where it doesn't truly become full screen, rather just assuming a size of which is the same as your monitor. I thought this would help solve the issue, but apparently not. This is more-likely causing the issue. Sorry about that. I don't have a copy of AoE to test with, and every other steam game I have can run full-screen correctly. I guess I can't help you any further unless I get some revelation.

[Ivo Dimov]

No problem buddy, thanks a lot for caring anyway :)

[Ivo Dimov]

I kind of solved it!!! I installed the lxde environment and full screen there takes full effect. No system elements on sight and the game plays even better because of this. I don't know how to mark the problem as solved though.

[AlwaysTalkingAboutMyDog]

Answer your own question with your solution (try to be detailed enough that others can solve their problem too), the accept it as the answer. Excellent job solving it though!

[svantej]

Thanks! I also solved it (fullscreen for RollerCoaster Tycoon 2) by installing another desktop environment (gnome-session-flashback) and changing it from user login. This was on Ubuntu 16.04.