I thought I would report this bug/issue. When I run Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, there isn’t any issue or problem. But as soon as I Alt-Tab out of the game, the graphics go all weird. I have provided a screenshot of what the screen looks like. Every other game I have works perfectly fine and I can Alt-Tab out of them with no problems. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling my graphics drivers and it hasn’t fixed the issue. If I exit the game, it goes away and I can open the game with no problem. But as soon as I Alt-Tab, the screen goes bad. Am I the only one experiencing this issue?
I suspect the problem may be due to two graphics cards not harmonizing properly. Does your laptop have a dedicated graphics card as well? Also, does the RGB noise change or flicker, or is it static? A common factor in both of your bug reports is the presence of a Radeon Vega Mobile integrated graphics processor.
I recommend trying the following steps in order, checking after each step to see if the issue persists:
a) Disable Fullscreen Optimizations
The game appears to have issues with Fullscreen Optimizations (see this forum post: 'Art of War' videos are not visible - #22 by cmfrydos ). Additionally, faster Alt-Tab functionality - which is part of these optimizations - could be problematic with multiple graphics cards. Here’s how to disable it:
Locate your game files (usually at C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\AoE2DE).
Right-click on AoE2DE_s.exe and select Properties.
Go to the Compatibility tab and enable Disable Fullscreen Optimizations.
Click Apply and then restart Age of Empires II.
b) Switch from Full Screen Mode to Full Desktop Mode or vice versa
I see your FSO disablement solution is slowly becoming the ‘GOAT’ (greatest of all time) solution to weird graphics issues
I feel AoE2:DE has been pretty unstable/unpredictable with ATL+TAB on my PC, where it sometimes completely crashes my game and I have to re-launch it. Although I’ve never had the RBG issue noted in OP here, I’m thinking the FSO disablement I did to fix the Art of War vid issue will probably make my ALT+TABs much more stable now. Over time, I’ll know
Hope Devs can fix the FSO issues someday with a patch
Funnily enough, a year ago, my game would often crash my entire computer when I alt-tabbed, freezing it completely and forcing me to restart. At the time, I blamed AoE—a Microsoft title—for embedding itself too deeply into Microsoft Windows, causing such a crash to happen. If only I had known back then that Fullscreen Optimizations were probably the culprit. After upgrading to a more powerful CPU, those crashes suddenly disappeared.
The fact that we discovered the FSO issue was sheer luck—I toggled a setting I had no clue about, then read about what it actually influences: layering a video, handling overlays from other programs, issues with multiple GPUs, and even alt-tabbing. Then, by pure chance, someone else experienced a related issue with the same underlying cause. It’s no grand revelation, but now I’m really curious to see if FSO is responsible for even more weird bugs and glitches.
