Development environment requirements for Windows Embedded 8.1 Handheld

Essentially, I am looking to find out the minimum development environment requirements for developing a Windows Embedded 8.1 Handheld application.

To be more specific and keep this question to a small, answerable scope I am looking for the following information:

• What operating systems can I use? Do I need to run Windows 8.1, or can I use Windows 8 or more importantly Windows 7? (which is my current OS)
• What is the minimum version of Visual Studio I can use? Do I require 2013, or can I manage with VS 2012? (if I can use 2012, are there any drawbacks?)

Basically, my current setup is Windows 7 with Visual Studio 2012... Can I use this to create C# Windows Embedded 8.1 Handheld applications?

For additional information, we are investigating requirements for developing an application on a Panasonic Toughpad FZ-E1

If you are targeting Windows Embedded 8.1 Handheld, you need to have VS2013. Old version Windows Embedded 8 Handheld was compatible with VS2012.

For VS2013 you need to have Windows 8/8.1 OS.

And the last but very important note is that you setup (processor) should have Hyper-V SLAT support, Otherwise Emulator for windows phone or windows embedded would not work.