New in the Focused Games Framework is the support for rotating and resizing the display on the fly. The main reason for this functionality is for mobile platforms like the Zune HD that support games in a landscape mode as well as a portrait mode. Supporting either in your game is made easy with FGF-you just need to know the right properties. In the standard display mode, the Zune HD has a display resolution of 272 pixels by 480 pixels. In landscape mode those two measurements are switched: 480 pixels by 272 pixels. While it is important to know the standard resolution, mucking about with a render target and backbuffer size is no longer necessary.

The one hitch? Your game class needs to inherit from FocusedGames.Xna.Application instead of Microsoft’s Game class. The following code block sets a Zune HD game up for landscape rendering.

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public class Game1 : Application
{
    public Game1()
    {
        // Set the display size and the rotation
        DisplaySize = new Vector2(272, 480);
        DisplayOrientation = DisplayOrientation.Rotated;
    }
 
    // ...
}

Note that to keep the device in portrait mode, you don’t need to change the value of DisplayOrientation but setting the DisplaySize property to the standard value is a good idea. Happy landscaping!