FEX 2405 Gets Close To Running Far Cry On ARM Linux Systems

[phoronix]

Phoronix: FEX 2405 Gets Close To Running Far Cry On ARM Linux Systems

FEX as the open-source project to run x86/x86_64 binaries on AArch64 Linux systems is out with its newest monthly release. With FEX 2405, they are close to having the game Far Cry (2004) running on ARM Linux devices...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/FEX-2405-Released

[danilw]

Far Cry (2004) running on ARM Linux

Not impressive.

WebGL offer same graphics as DX8-9 games, and WebGL work perfectly fine on ARM.
Binary translation - 2004 game works on 1.1Ghz single core CPU, and today is 2024.

Seems less efficient than WASM-WebGL ports/llvm-translations of old x86 games.

[ayumu]

Meanwhile, Box64 advances its RISC-V support.

[dylanmtaylor]

But can it run Crysis?

(Not really a serious question, I just couldn't resist the meme)

[MastaG]

Meanwhile, Box64 advances its RISC-V support.

I think in the long run FEX will do much better.
The project and code base are more structured and better accessible for new devs, compared to box64.
It even has its own instruction count CI.
It also has more developers working on it, including Alyssa Rosenzweig, Sonicadvance1, neobrain, lioncash, bylaws (working on Cassia for running Windows games on Android) and some developers working for Igalia.

[jeisom]

Do either of Fex or Box64 use native libraries when available? For instance using native openssl by way of a stub instead of emulating those functions.

[Quackdoc]

Not impressive.

WebGL offer same graphics as DX8-9 games, and WebGL work perfectly fine on ARM.
Binary translation - 2004 game works on 1.1Ghz single core CPU, and today is 2024.

Seems less efficient than WASM-WebGL ports/llvm-translations of old x86 games.

way to announce you have zero idea of literally anything you are talking about

[fahrenheit]

Do either of Fex or Box64 use native libraries when available? For instance using native openssl by way of a stub instead of emulating those functions.

At least box does that, it calls it wrapping a library, you can check their blog for more information: https://box86.org/2024/02/how-to-create-a-wrapping/

[Quackdoc]

I think in the long run FEX will do much better.
The project and code base are more structured and better accessible for new devs, compared to box64.
It even has its own instruction count CI.
It also has more developers working on it, including Alyssa Rosenzweig, Sonicadvance1, neobrain, lioncash, bylaws (working on Cassia for running Windows games on Android) and some developers working for Igalia.

Interesting, how is architecture portability of FEX? I know that (for now) it's only targeting arm64, But I wonder how the effort of porting it to riscv will be, which IMO is criticial for it to "do better then box86/64"

[sophisticles]

That screenshot had me thinking that Far Cry was ahead of its time with how good it looked. then i found this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0Vw2BijeyM

I also wonder what ARM devices will someone be running this on.

And why?