AIR Project Dimensions for Retina Support

Question

I am a bit confused with how the project dimensions I set up in Flash Develop will affect my AIR Application's appearance on Retina and non-Retina iPad displays, and how to work with Bitmaps under these circumstances.

When I run in Flash Player on PC to debug the 2048x1536 is off of my monitor it's so big. I've heard that the stage will scale with the size of the screen, and is just a reference coordinate system, but I don't understand how Bitmaps would work in these conditions... Are the Bitmaps scaled automatically all too? Does it matter whether I set my project dimensions to 2048x1546?

My hesitance to get started with this is that I will be using some spritesheets via Starling and I am confused with how to treat their dimensions in these circumstances.

Plz set me straight if you have knowledge and a minute. Appreciated.

Answer 1

You don't have to use 2048x1536. You can just use 1024x768 for your project dimensions. Make sure that stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.SHOW_ALL; but that's the default if I'm not mistaken.

Retina iPads will just show it doubled, so everything gets scaled up to 2048x1536. That means your bitmaps won't look as sharp as they can be, but vector graphics DO look sharp because Flash uses the extra resolution on a retina screen.

You could write some code to use higher-resolution bitmaps if you're on a retina display but I don't actually know of a good way of detecting retina resolution other than checking the screen dimensions. Or you could use high-resolution bitmaps that will be scaled down on non-retina screens (make sure to allow smoothing).

Also, I don't have experience with Starling myself so that may behave differently. Hope this helps a bit anyway.