Using the Windows Phone Emulator

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The Windows Phone emulator is a software version of the Windows Phone environment that is part of the Microsoft Windows Phone SDK. It may be used as a deployment and debugging platform for Windows Phone applications, as well as for XNA Game Studio games for Windows Phone. It can be especially useful when a physical Windows Phone device is unavailable.

Important

To successfully deploy to the Windows Phone emulator, your development system must have a DirectX 10 or later graphics card and a compatible driver installed. For more information see Troubleshooting Windows Phone Deployment.

Launching the Windows Phone Emulator

The Windows Phone emulator is launched automatically when an XNA Game Studio game is deployed to it.

For information about this procedure, see Deploying a Windows Phone Game.

Using the Windows Phone Emulator

When the Windows Phone emulator is selected as the current device and an XNA Game Studio game is deployed, the emulator is automatically launched.

Figure 1.  Windows Phone emulator

Ff434574.UsingXNA_Mobile_Emulator(en-us,XNAGameStudio.41).png

Toolbar

The toolbar displayed alongside the Windows Phone emulator offers the following controls, listed in order from top to bottom:

  • Close - Terminates the Windows Phone emulator.
  • Minimize - Minimizes the Windows Phone emulator to the Windows taskbar.
  • Rotate Left - Rotates the Windows Phone emulator display 90 degrees counterclockwise.
  • Rotate Right - Rotates the Windows Phone emulator display 90 degrees clockwise.
  • Resize - Toggles the Windows Phone emulator display between reduced and full size.
  • Zoom - Invokes the Zoom dialog box to resize the emulator.