Windows 8 Emulators

Here is a compact yet deep technical exploration about emulation of the Windows 8 Metro end-user interface introduced by Windows Phone 7.

Related topics elsewhere on this same website (WilsonMar.com):

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Emulation in Silverlight

Michael Lee created a Silverlight web app which brings the Windows 8 look and feel to internet browsers, without running a Windows Store app. The web app launches user’s frequently visited sites. In 2011, My Microsoft Life notes that it will eventually sign-in users can customize and aggregate content from web services so users’ friends can populate the people section of the emulator.

Windows RT (Store Apps) Emulator

No tablet? Perform common touch and rotation events in Visual Stuido Simulator for Metro Apps desktop program to run the app within a simulated tablet environment.

DO THIS: Instead of Local Machine, select Simulator to run your app.

When you're done with it, close the window from the task bar.

Windows Phone 8 Emulator

The Windows Phone 8 Emulator needs to run on hardware that supports SLAT (Second Level Address Translation) in CPUs based on the Nehalem, Westmere, or Sandybridge micro-architectures. SLAT Intel calls EPT (Extended Page Table) in their i-Series processors (e.g., i3, i5, i7, i9).

To determine if your machine supports SLAT,
DOWNLOAD: SysInternals/TechNet CoreInfo

Download to C:\Temp folder, expand it to a Bin folder specified in the PATH Windows environment variable.

Open a Run and Cmd to run:

coreinfo -v

coreinfo response sample

If it doesn't say "Supports Intel extended page tables (SLAT)" then start looking for a new computer :). Installation of the Windows Phone SDK 8.0 into Visual Studio 2012 would result in message:

coreinfo response sample

The emulator works through Hyper-V.

Windows Phone Simulator

TOOL: Windows Phone Simulator for Visual Studio 2012. It is simulator in that it establishes an RDP session to control accelerometer, Geolocation, and touch screen without the physical device. During install it creates "Windows Simulator\Microsoft.Windows.Simulator.exe" within C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\.

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