XNA Game Studio and Windows Phone Emulator Compatibility
I’ve noticed on the forums that a few people are running into some compatibility issue with XNA Game Studio and the Windows Phone Emulator.
One of the first things you should do is make sure that your graphics drivers are up to date and if not install them from your hardware manufacturer. This has resolved many issues, but you’ll want to be aware of the requirement for a DirectX 10 or later graphics card for developing XNA Framework content with the Windows Phone Emulator.
For reference I’ve included the full text from the release notes below:
XNA Game Studio will check for a DirectX 10 or later graphics card before deploying to the Windows Phone Emulator. If the graphics card does not support DirectX 10 or later, the following message will be displayed in the error window of Visual Studio:
Deploy failed with the following error: The current display adapter does not meet the emulator requirements to run XNA Framework applications.
The DirectX Caps Viewer Tool can be used to determine if a graphics card supports DirectX 10 or later. This tool is available for download via DirectX SDK.
To determine if a graphics card supports DirectX 10 or later:
- In the DirectX Caps Viewer, expand the DXGI 1.1 Devices folder, and then expand the next level folder for the video card. Under this folder, you will see folders for Direct3D® 10, Direct3D 10.1, and the like.
- Expand the Direct3D 10.1 folder and look at the Feature Level entry. In this folder, you will see an entry for D3D10_FEATURE_LEVEL_10_0 or D3D10_FEATURE_LEVEL_10_1 if the graphics card supports DirectX 10 or later. If the Feature Level indicates a feature level of 9_n or less, it cannot support the Direct3D of the Windows Phone Emulator.
If you see this error message and your graphics card is DirectX 10-capable as reported by the DirectX Caps Viewer Tool, you should refer to the Web site for the manufacturer of the graphics card to see if a newer driver is available.
On Windows Vista®, SP2 and the 4 updates that are a part of KB 971644 are also required to support deployment to the Windows Phone Emulator:
- Update for Windows Vista (KB971512)
- Update for Windows Vista (KB971513)
- Update for Windows Vista (KB971514)
- Update for Windows Vista (KB960362)
It is possible to bypass this capabilities check in XNA Game Studio by setting the following registry setting:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\XDE XNAEnableGPU = 1 (REG_DWORD)
Caution: If you override this registry key, the project will attempt to deploy but only a black screen will be displayed in the emulator if the required graphics card capabilities are not available.
Immediately after the install, the "Hello World" xna 2d sprite game that was published compiled and ran on the emulator without issue; however, the 1st-time startup duration of the emulator had me a little worried.
After the 1st-time startup, it seems to popup much quicker now.
*However*, the emulator runs things very, very, very (very!) slowly.
What type of machine are you running? It would be great to get some data if your seeing performance issues.
Here are the specs (sorry took so long to get back!):
Toshiba Satellite laptop
Windows Vista Home Premium SP2 (32-bit)
Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T5750 @ 2.00GHz
3 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT / NVIDIA Driver 8.17.11.9562 (11/20/2009)
The emulator pegged CPU at almost 100% for a simple silverlight app. It was running on Windows 7 virtual machine on a new Mac. I'll try it on native Windows tonight.
Running though a Virtual Machine isn't a supported scenario, did you have any luck with native Windows?
In my case, my card and drivers are ok, but the emulator takes too long to start (eventually it does and the game runs ok). What could be the problem?
For me the emulator appears to require that it be launched from an administrator account (or launch as admin from a standard account). Otherwise it just fails with a "deployment error" but no information in the IDE. Attempting to continue gives a error number but no text. Not a big deal, just a little confusing.
I fear there will be quite a few hardware upgrades to support the emulator's DX10 graphic requirements
, but thats progress……
Hello,
Not working for me.
I have an ATI RADEON Mobility HD 3470. I have installed the relatively new drivers (Sept 2009). I have the same error.
Did you try the registry workaround?
I too am runnin into the same problem, the drivers and support for DX10.1 seem fine to me, I have posted the below in XNA forum too…
___________________
Hi,
I too am facing the same problem as everyone else. The dreaded "Deploy failed with the following error: The current display adapter does not meet… " error. The details are below, if someones got any idea it'll be awesome,
System: Dell Studio 1555
Video: ATI Mobility Radeon 4570 (this supports DirectX 10.1)
The DxCapsViewer tool shows D3D10_FEATURE_LEVEL_10_1, as mentioned in Michael Klutcher's blog.
Initially I was running Vista SP1 32-bit so I installed SP2 and also a bunch of important Windows Updates.
The DxDiag tool shows the DirectX version to be 11, and the DDI version to be 10.1. I am not sure if this'll help.
I checked the manufactures' site (Dell support) for any update to the Catalyst Control Center driver, and installed a minor update and now am running 8.631 version of CCC.
I also checked AMD's support site for any update to video drivers, as I had read that the manufacturer might not list the latest and the greatest driver always. And AMD does not list any update to the Mobility Radeon 4500 series.
So in all of the above my system seems to be qualifying well, and I don't see any reason why XNA 4.0 won't deploy to the emulator. I also tried the registry fix mentioned by Michael on his blog, but that didn't work as well, I got a NotSupported exception while deploying.
So I am totally stuck and wondering what to try next. There is one thing that I noticed in the Catalyst Control Center. CCC lists the Direct3D version as 8.12 I am not sure why and could be a bug in CCC. Or maybe this is causing all the problems, I don't know.
The only thing I can think of now is to upgrade to Windows 7, Dell has a CCC upgrade version available for Windows 7 but I can't be 100% sure that that'll work too.
Is there anything else that I can give a shot at?
Prabhu
How did you add they registry key? You would get a blank screen but should not get that error with the key…
Thanks,
Michael
The registry key I added using regedit, and I am running with administrator priviliges. The exception that gets thrown with the registry workaround is:
A first chance exception of type 'System.NotSupportedException' occurred in Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game.dll
A first chance exception of type 'Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.NoSuitableGraphicsDeviceException' occurred in Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game.dll
A first chance exception of type 'Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.NoSuitableGraphicsDeviceException' occurred in Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game.dll
umm.. so the registry fix is supposed to show a blank screen… I wonder whats going on. Do you have a clue?
i have done all of these things except the reg edit and the same thing still happens.i get that error. and i have intel g41 express chipset so i know that it can support directx 10. Whats wrong?
Thanks for this thread !
I can now run correctly the WP7 emulator.
I have followed all these advices. It effectively succedded after the 4 updates installations.