So, how many aspect ratios will WP7S have exactly?

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Windows Phone Thoughts have noticed something that slipped most people's attention: there was an announcement about two resolutions, WVGA and HVGA, supported by WP7S, which makes two aspect ratios. Hardware scaler or not, this is a problem in terms of UI development. So either this is a strange change in MS's approach, or there's a simple typo/mistake somewhere.

I got the same question because I notice 2 different aspect ratios:

800x480 and 480x320.

Both are different.

And this morning, I found the answer from Microsoft developer Shawn Hargreaves:
http://blogs.msdn.com/shawnhar/archi...-vs-hidef.aspx

Sunday, March 14, 2010 11:56 PM by ShawnHargreaves
# re: Reach vs. HiDef

> Why there are 2 different aspect ratios?

> 800x480 vs 480x320

> Game screen will look different.

If you just program to a fixed resolution, you will get letterboxing (black bars) if the game is played on a device with a different aspect ratio. Everything will still work fine, though, and we will never stretch or distort the image.

If you want to detect the native resolution and adjust your rendering for different aspect ratios, you can do that to. I think it will depend on the game which is the better/easier way to go.

So, there you go

Originally Posted by vangrieg

Windows Phone Thoughts have noticed something that slipped most people's attention: there was an announcement about two resolutions, WVGA and HVGA, supported by WP7S, which makes two aspect ratios. Hardware scaler or not, this is a problem in terms of UI development. So either this is a strange change in MS's approach, or there's a simple typo/mistake somewhere.

I think they are really wanting to appeal to the business user with the 480x320 resolution and front facing qwerty. I don't think games with be a big deal on these devices. It's nice to see some diversity hopefully it doesn't cause any issues.

But it's most certainly an issue and it really goes against everything they preach with regard to platform standardization. I also can't quite imagine their start screen working well on a small landscape-oriented screen. What a weird twist.

The second aspect ratio, HVGA 480x320 will be a bit wider on the 320 side compared to the first aspect ratio.

I expect the main gui aspect ratio will not be stretched, but the "cut off" screen will be much more shown.

Well, we know very little about the 480x320 version anyway. Who knows what that one will be like?

They didn't learn sh!t from the past....

In theory, it’s usually considered best to write programs that adapt themselves to any screen
size, but that’s not always possible, particularly with game development. You will probably find
yourself specifically targeting these two screen sizes, even to the extent of having if/else clauses
and different XAML files for layout that is size-dependent.

Launch res: 480h/800w = 0.60
Second res: 320h/480w = 0.67

I don't think the hardware scaler is going to have a hard time dealing with this. When I saw them demo it at GDC I couldn't tell a difference. The developer will only have to work on one aspect ratio / pixel count and the phone will do the rest of the work automatically, they said.