iOS app stops with a black screen when device is rotated during startup

[kasparv]

For the iOS AIR app I have the following settings in the app descriptor:

<aspectRatio>landscape</aspectRatio>
<autoOrients>true</autoOrients>
<fullScreen>true</fullScreen>

When the device is being rotated during app startup, the screen goes black after showing launch screen and the app won't proceed to the AIR/Flash content.
Is this a known issue?
Are there any workarounds besides setting autoOrients to false? I would like the customers to have a choice which way in landscape they can keep the device to use the app.

The launch screen itself is done in Xcode and working fine, the app is already on the App Store but it's an annoying bug that I'd like to fix...

[GeneralVimes]

I confirm - after reading your post I checked my games https://apps.apple.com/in/app/farm-and-mine-deep-idle-ld48/id1564694016 (built with AIR 33.1.1.821) and the bug is present there. To reproduce the device must be rotated at the moment Harman splash is shown.

[GeneralVimes]

Also it was possible to reproduce the bug with an earlier made game https://apps.apple.com/in/developer/alexey-izvalov/id1437172357 built with a paid tier AIR SDK 33.1.1.476
The device must be rotated right after the start

[FliplineStudios]

I'm seeing the same thing with our game built with 33.1.1.743: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1591627945?ls=1
Same setup with landscape, fullscreen, autoOrients, on the paid tier with a custom LaunchScreen Storyboard. Also seeing the same for another game build with 33.1.1.476.

However I am not seeing this behavior with an older game built with 33.1.1.63 (https://apps.apple.com/app/id1504952058?ls=1), which was before Harman changed their own splash screen to use a launch Storyboard in the SDK. This app with .63 is set up the same way, using our own custom LaunchScreen Storyboard on the paid tier. Based on this, I'm guessing it's something within the Harman launch storyboard handling (even when using paid-tier custom storyboards) in these newer releases that's causing this problem.

Also somewhat unrelated, but after looking back at this older app, I forgot how much faster iOS AIR apps used to launch with Storyboards, and it was only after the Harman splash mechanism was changed to Storyboards that it added quite a bit of delay...

[ajwfrost]

Interesting - thanks for raising this one! We'll look into it, it definitely seems related to the launch storyboard mechanism...

[FliplineStudios]

@ajwfrost Any update on fixing this issue with rotating during launch in a future update?

We've been getting more emails from our users having this problem with our latest apps. Especially since our launch storyboard has a "Loading..." graphic that's oriented for landscape, so users are naturally rotating their phones when that storyboard is being shown and then getting stuck with the black screen immediately after...

[ajwfrost]

Thanks - still no reproduction here which is odd.. @FliplineStudios we have tried that sequence too i.e. start holding the phone portrait, then rotate the phone when the splash screen appears.

One other question though: is this only happening if it's a production license? I'm assuming that we'd be able to reproduce it when using the built-in splash screen for non-commercial users, because it should be the same thing i.e. a storyboard file added to the info.plist .. if you take out your adt license file and re-package does the same thing happen when you have the Harman/AIR launch storyboard?

thanks

[FliplineStudios]

I don't have all of my iOS devices with me at the moment, but strangely I can't seem to trigger the problem on this iPhone X, but with an iPad I can get it to happen about 75% of the time -- and weirdly it triggers more often when going from portrait to upside-down landscape on this device. I'll see if I can get some better test cases, and try without the production license too...

[FliplineStudios]

Quick update: It's also happening using the free tier, when I remove the license and custom launch storyboard and default to the Harman splash storyboard. It may be the timing of when you rotate the device has some effect on whether this problem occurs. I should note our app is around 30MB with lots of content (thousands of MovieClips of vector art), so it does sit on the splash storyboard for a couple seconds, giving a wider window of time where we can rotate it and see this problem happening (in case your test project starts up really fast and you have a smaller window of time to try to rotate it)

[itlancer]

@ajwfrost
Issue still exists with latest AIR 51.0.1.4. Can be reproduced with any iOS device (iPhones and iPads) with any iOS version. Happens in ~70% launches. Sometimes it could be reproduced only in "one way rotation". I mean lanscape->portrait or portrait->lanscape. Storyboard should be used by app and auto-rotate should be enabled on device in OS settigns.

I noticed there is no such issue with AIR 51 BETA (51.0.0.2). Seems "BETA version SDK" popup invalidate something and all works correctly.

I notice that sometimes it could be "fixed" after launch by some actions may be related to StageText focusing or something like that. Application could start to render normally again.

[itlancer]

@ajwfrost
Issue still exists with latest AIR 51.1.3.7.

And again, it works fine with AIR 51.2.0.1 BETA. Seems "BETA version SDK" popup invalidate something and all works correctly.