{"id":8483,"date":"2015-02-23T09:38:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T09:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/visualstudioalm\/2015\/02\/23\/the-visual-studio-emulator-for-android-in-vs2015-ctp6\/"},"modified":"2022-07-28T01:40:49","modified_gmt":"2022-07-28T09:40:49","slug":"the-visual-studio-emulator-for-android-in-vs2015-ctp6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/the-visual-studio-emulator-for-android-in-vs2015-ctp6\/","title":{"rendered":"The Visual Studio Emulator for Android in VS2015 CTP6"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n  In November <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/b\/visualstudioalm\/archive\/2014\/11\/12\/introducing-visual-studio-s-emulator-for-android.aspx\">we launched the Visual Studio Emulator for Android<\/a> and have gotten great positive feedback from you. Since then we\u2019ve continued to work hard to provide a fast, Hyper-V compatible, x86 Android emulator for all of your debugging and testing needs. Today I\u2019m happy to announce that our emulator just got a little sweeter with an update that adds <strong>Lollipop targets<\/strong>, <strong>OpenGL ES support<\/strong>, <strong>multi-touch input<\/strong>, and<strong> advanced camera simulation<\/strong>.\n<\/div>\n<h2>Lollipop (API Level 21) Debug Targets<\/h2>\n<div>\n  Starting with Visual Studio 2015 CTP6, you can debug your C++ Cross-Platform, JavaScript (or Typescript) Cordova, and C# Xamarin applications against Android\u2019s latest platform version (Android 5.0) using the included Visual Studio Emulator for Android. Just select the VS Emulator Lollipop Tablet or Phone targets in your debug target dropdown and you\u2019re ready to go.\n<\/div>\n<div>\n  In C++ projects, select x86 as your architecture and the dropdown will include these entries:\n<\/div>\n<div>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/02\/3000.ctp6_cplusplus.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-right: auto;margin-left: auto\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/02\/3000.ctp6_cplusplus.png\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n  Note that these entries will not appear if ARM is the selected architecture. In Cordova projects, the entries will appear like this:\n<\/div>\n<div>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/02\/8686.ctp6_cordova.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-right: auto;margin-left: auto\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/02\/8686.ctp6_cordova.png\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n  In Cordova projects, you must have the \u201cAndroid\u201d platform selected to see these options. In Xamarin projects, the entries will appear like this:\n<\/div>\n<div>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/02\/6354.ctp6_xamarin.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-right: auto;margin-left: auto\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/02\/6354.ctp6_xamarin.png\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n  All of the simulations and features of the KitKat debug targets will work with these new Lollipop targets.\n<\/div>\n<h2>OpenGL ES Support<\/h2>\n<div>\n  OpenGL ES is a popular graphics API on the Android platform and the VS Emulator for Android can now render apps that make use of OpenGL ES up to version 2.0. We\u2019ve been trying it out with some Unity apps and the experience is fast and smooth. (If you\u2019re curious, under the hood we\u2019re forwarding OpenGL ES calls to the host machine\u2019s GPU and using ANGLE to translate the calls to DirectX). Check out this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.assetstore.unity3d.com\/en\/#!\/content\/11903\">Particle Callbacks<\/a> sample that uses OpenGL and Unity running on our emulator:\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\">\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/02\/8004.opengl.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/02\/8004.opengl.png\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Multi-Touch Input Simulation<\/h2>\n<div>\n  We\u2019ve also added the ability to simulate multi-touch inputs. When running the emulator, you can now select between \u201cSingle Point Input\u201d and \u201cMulti-touch Input.\u201d Selecting \u201cMulti-touch Input\u201d will overlay three dots. The large outer two dots act as two touch points for pinching and zooming and the inner dot controls the origin for the touch points. If you\u2019re using the emulator on a touchscreen you can also use your fingers to directly interact with the emulator screen.\n<\/div>\n<div>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/02\/0537.multitouch.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-right: auto;margin-left: auto\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/02\/0537.multitouch.png\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Camera Simulation<\/h2>\n<div>\n  In this release we\u2019ve added some advanced camera simulation capabilities that you can access through the \u201cCamera\u201d tab in the Additional Tools flyout. You can now switch the simulation to display a default animation, a picture from file, or an attached webcam for both the front and rear cameras. Any webcam recognized by Windows will show up in the dropdown lists for front and rear camera, which is great news for the selfie-lovers among us (or those who write apps for them)!\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\">\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/02\/1780.webcam.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/02\/1780.webcam.png\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n  Please note that the CTP6 release of the Emulator does not do a build-to-build upgrade from previous releases. To install the CTP6 version of the Emulator, make sure you&#8217;ve removed any older\u00a0&#8220;Microsoft Visual Studio Emulator for Android&#8221; entries in your Add\/Remove Programs list.\n<\/div>\n<div>\n  Excited to try out all the new features? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.visualstudio.com\/downloads\/visual-studio-2015-ctp-vs\">Download Visual Studio 2015 CTP6<\/a> and make sure the \u201cVisual Studio Emulator for Android\u201d option is checked underneath one of the Cross-Platform project types. As always, we welcome your feedback to help us prioritize what\u2019s to come in future releases, so drop us a line in the comments and ask us for help on <a href=\"http:\/\/stackoverflow.com\/questions\/tagged\/android-emulator\">StackOverflow<\/a>!\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In November we launched the Visual Studio Emulator for Android and have gotten great positive feedback from you. Since then we\u2019ve continued to work hard to provide a fast, Hyper-V compatible, x86 Android emulator for all of your debugging and testing needs. Today I\u2019m happy to announce that our emulator just got a little sweeter [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":45953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,225],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-devops","category-git"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>In November we launched the Visual Studio Emulator for Android and have gotten great positive feedback from you. Since then we\u2019ve continued to work hard to provide a fast, Hyper-V compatible, x86 Android emulator for all of your debugging and testing needs. Today I\u2019m happy to announce that our emulator just got a little sweeter [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}