Heroes Of Might And Magic Emulator Software Abstraction Layer

Heroes Of Might And Magic Emulator Software Abstraction Layer

The tool, which seems to be called Win86Emu, is essentially an x86 emulator or software abstraction layer for Windows RT.

If youve used DOSBox, or some kind of game console emulator, Win86Emu is very similar: You run Win86Emu, select which x86 app you want to execute, and then if everything goes to plan your x86 app will appear.

In essence, Win86Emu grabs the API calls made by the x86 app, converts them into the Windows RT equivalent, and then passes them along to the WinRT kernel.

See: Under the hood of Windows 8RT.) As far as the x86 app is concerned, its running on a normal x86 Windows machine.

As long as your x86 app uses the emulators supported APIs, youre fine but at the moment, Win86Emu only supports a limited subsection of API calls, and some translations from x86 to the WinRT kernel arent perfect.

As a result, HoMM3 works under the emulator, but it doesnt have any music.

Emulation is a lot slower than native execution, too and coupled with ARMs wimpiness compared to the latest x86 silicon, dont expect your Windows RT tablet to run Crysis.

This hack follows on from last months jailbreak of Windows RT, which gives you the ability to run non-Microsoft apps on the Desktop.

The original jailbreak has since been turned into an easy-to-use tool that executes every time you log in and indeed, you need to run the jailbreak before you can use Win86Emu.

If you own a Windows RT tablet, XDA-Developers has a nice list of Desktop apps that you can run on jailbroken devices.

You see, the only advantage that ARM SoCs currently have over x86 is reduced power consumption but in the next year or so, Intel will catch up.

Coupled with the fact that Microsoft made the crazy decision to lock down Windows RTs Desktop, and that Windows RT lacks the native ability to run x86 apps (Microsoft couldve easily included its own emulator), and its really rather hard to imagine Windows on ARM beating Windows on x86.

Now that a couple of hackers have jailbroken Windows RT and created an x86 emulator, it will be interesting to see how Microsoft reacts.

Microsofts claimed reason for locking down Windows RT is stability and reliability Windows RT is consumer-oriented, and it doesnt want ma and pa to install jury-rigged x86 apps that will cause their system to crash.

Instead of a complete lockdown, though, Microsoft couldve just buried the switches deep within the Control Panel, so that power users at least have the option of running x86 and Desktop apps on their Windows RT tablet.

Who knows: Maybe the locked-down Desktop and lack of x86 emulation is actually the result of an internal, political struggle at Wintels hegemonic HQ.

Now read: Windows 8: The disastrous result of Microsofts gutless equivocation.

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