Handling iphone screen orientation

[kondor-dev]

I recently decided to try axmol and I encountered a problem with handling iphone orientation change.
My question is whether axmol supports both portrait and landscape orientation for one ios app.

What I did:
in axmol 2.8.1 I created a new project
build: axmol build -p ios -a arm64 -c
open xcode project in xcode 16.4
in "General" tab I selected all orientations
in AppDelegate.cpp changed resolution policy to NO_BORDER

When the app starts everything looks good. No matter if the iphone is portrait or landscape, the app is ok and fills the whole screen.

When the device is rotated the screen looks wrong.

Is it possible to handle orientation change somehow?
Ideal solution would be to handle this in the runtime and rebuild the scene. But after the device is rotated "_director->getVisibleSize()" still gives the same value.
Accepted solution would be to have a button in the app that can control what orientation the user wants. Desired orientation can be saved in user defaults and read when the app starts. After clicking the app will swap the saved orientation (from portrait to landscape and vice versa) and show information to the user "Orientation changed. Please reopen the app."

[rh101]

You may need to handle the callback AppDelegate::applicationScreenSizeChanged to set the new frame size via RenderView::setFrameSize, and then a call to RenderView::setDesignResolutionSize() may be needed to update everything.

For example:

In AppDelegate.h, add the following:

class AppDelegate : private ax::Application
{
public:
...
    void applicationScreenSizeChanged(int newWidth, int newHeight) override;
    
private:
    void initializeView(const ax::Size& frameSize);
...
}

In AppDelegate.cpp:

bool AppDelegate::applicationDidFinishLaunching()
{
    // initialize director
    auto director = Director::getInstance();
    auto renderView   = director->getRenderView();
    if (!renderView)
    {
#if (AX_TARGET_PLATFORM == AX_PLATFORM_WIN32) || (AX_TARGET_PLATFORM == AX_PLATFORM_MAC) || \
    (AX_TARGET_PLATFORM == AX_PLATFORM_LINUX)
        renderView = RenderViewImpl::createWithRect(
            "otest", ax::Rect(0, 0, designResolutionSize.width, designResolutionSize.height));
#else
        renderView = RenderViewImpl::create("HelloWorld");
#endif
        director->setRenderView(renderView);
    }

    // turn on display FPS
    director->setStatsDisplay(true);

    // set FPS. the default value is 1.0/60 if you don't call this
    director->setAnimationInterval(1.0f / 60);

    const auto frameSize = renderView->getFrameSize();

    initializeView(frameSize);

    // create a scene. it's an autorelease object
    auto scene = utils::createInstance<MainScene>();

    // run
    director->runWithScene(scene);

    return true;
}

void AppDelegate::initializeView(const ax::Size& frameSize)
{
    auto director = Director::getInstance();
    auto renderView = director->getRenderView();

    renderView->setDesignResolutionSize(designResolutionSize.width, designResolutionSize.height, ResolutionPolicy::NO_BORDER);
    director->setContentScaleFactor(1.0f);
}

void AppDelegate::applicationScreenSizeChanged(int newWidth, int newHeight)
{
    if (newWidth > 0 && newHeight > 0) {
        auto director = Director::getInstance();
        auto renderView = director->getRenderView();
        if (renderView)
        {
            Size frameSize = renderView->getFrameSize();
            if (!frameSize.equals(Size(newWidth, newHeight)))
            {
                renderView->setFrameSize(newWidth, newHeight);
                initializeView(Size(newWidth, newHeight));
            }
        }
    }
}

[rh101]

I'd like implement in engine side "feat: support dynamic device orientation changed", just like: #2760

It would be good if the engine would correctly handle updating the view on orientation change, so that the frame size and such things are correct etc..

Updating the scene content would still be the developer's responsibility, since the scene layout may be different for portrait and landscape.

[halx99]

Updating the scene content would still be the developer's responsibility, since the scene layout may be different for portrait and landscape.

Yes, we can fire a event at here to notify user the scene content need to re-layout:

void RenderView::onRenderResized()
{
    AXLOGD("RenderView::onRenderResized");

    Director::getInstance()->resizeSwapchain(static_cast<uint32_t>(_renderSize.width),
                                             static_cast<uint32_t>(_renderSize.height));

#ifdef AX_ENABLE_VR
    if (_vrRenderer) [[unlikely]]
        _vrRenderer->onRenderViewResized(this);
#endif
}

[halx99]

Yes, we can fire a event at here to notify user the scene content need to re-layout:

Two things:

1. Mobile platforms: when recive screen size changed, re-layout RenderView first, then invoke applicationScreenSizeChanged
2. Desktop platforms: add missing applicationScreenSizeChanged calls

[halx99]

PR #2762 created and ready to review now, I have tested on all platforms and works well.

0a5c5390736d55a6c4d98dbc6fff601a.mp4

[kondor-dev]

Thank you for your answer, I will test the presented solution.