Leaving a fullscreen program/game doesn't restore resolution

[zzarko]

The problem is this: when I start a program or game that uses fullscreen mode, often happens that desktop resolution isn't supported, or needs to be changed for performance reasons, and program/game changes current resolution while it's running. When I close program/game, desktop remains in program/game's resolution instead of returning to default desktop resolution. I had this problem before, but it seems that it got worse since I jumped from Gnome2 to Unity. This is still the issue in 12.04.

It can be tested with supertuxcart, for example. If you have laptop with not-so-great 3D capabilities, it is desirable to run the game at lower resolution than desktop. After leaving the game, the resolution remains lower.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Neven Blazic (nevenblazic)]

This is annoying bug, its happening to me when playing Heroes of Might and Magic 3, i need to log out and log back in to fix resolution.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

This is not a Unity bug. I believe it's probably the responsibility of the program/game to restore the original video mode.

[zzarko (zzarko-gmail)]

There are many games that don't restore resolution at exit. Is it possible that so many of them are doing things wrong? This sounds like system issue to me, not neceserally Unity issue, but maybe Gnome 3? Is it possible to detect that aplicattion that was closed was working in fullscreen mode (or, in different resolution than desktop default)? If yes, then, I guess, this problem could be solved on operating system level.

[Amr Ibrahim (amribrahim1987)]

Maybe a duplicate of this https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg-server/+bug/626321