You may recall that one of the design goals of Windows Store apps was that they should run equally well on a multitude of devices, including tablets and other touch-enabled devices and they should also support a number of different views such as the Snapped and Full views.
I'm not sure about you, but most developers I know use powerful desktops or high-end laptops for developing software and at this point in time those machines aren't typically equipped with touch input or gyroscopes. Well, not yet anyway.
Microsoft realized that this would likely be the case and have included with Visual Studio 2012 a Windows 8 Simulator that can be used to test your Windows Store apps without the need of a second physical machine to deploy to.
The simulator is similar in concept to the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 emulator used in developing Windows Phone 7 software. Let's have a look at how we make use of the simulator.