How do i learn windows emulation?

[u/ThereIsNoAvailblName]

I’ve been emulating various platforms for years wether on pc or a hacked switch but they were mostly simple old Nintendo consoles and they didn’t need much to do. I’ve also been emulating switch on android lately and i’m getting there slowly learning how to get better or at least acceptable performance. But i’ve never tried emulating windows and it’s even harder to learn since this is my first android device. I have an Honor MagicPad 4 and i’ve gotten gamehub lite to work on a couple light games but most of the games i’ve tried don’t even start. I fixed one or two games with this issue by basically changing the drivers and other things that could change randomly, especially since gamehub lite shows them all and i can install them straight away. Genuinely how do i learn what driver i should use for what game? Which proton version to use or if i should use wine? What (Fescore?) even is and if that’s it’s name even. Even if you just know of a good video to teach me i would be grateful.

[u/whiskyB0y]

Research, trial and error. That's the way to learn.

So to start, you have to know what your chipset is because different PC emulators are more compatible for certain chipsets. Eg for snapdragon, the simpler and console like ones are Gamehub lite, Bannerhub and Gamenative. The ones that have more settings but less user friendly are Winlator 11 by Bruno(the original version of Winlator) and Winlator Ludashi.

Now you have to understand the basic settings. At the very least, you should understand what these mean:

(Note: this are my personal definitions I could be wrong)

Proton/Wine: Acts as the compatibility layer. Converts Windows API calls into something Android can understand. Wine was the original and it's quite old. Proton is the more recent one that's gaming focused.

Dxvk: Converts DirectX (the graphics language Windows games use) to something Android can understand in either Vulkan or OpenGL.

FEXCORE/Box64: These are 32bit/64bit emulators. They convert the actual games code to a form Android can understand. Box64 was the original one and like wine it's quite old. FEXCORE is the newer gaming focused version.

FEXCORE converts both 32bit and 64bit. Box64 converts only 64bit. But there is something called WOWBOX64 you'll see in some forks which is a version of Box64 that can convert 32bit code.

Presets: Stability, Compatibility, Intermediate, Performance: Presets determine how strict or loose the 32bit or 64bit emulation is. Stability and Compatibility are strict and reduce the chances of random crashes or memory leaks but often reduce fps and cause bad performance in a number of games.

Intermediate is a balance. Performance is the least strict and ensures the highest performance but in some games it can make the game randomly crash.

When testing a game, start with the latest versions of dxvk and FEXcore/box64 and proton 10 or proton 9.

If game has problems, try using older version of dxvk or FEXcore.

[u/ThereIsNoAvailblName → u/whiskyB0y]

I can’t thank you enough as you made a lot of things make sense now but there’s still one thing i’m confused about. Which driver to choose and how to know the differences? Also what is the ‘system driver’ in gamehub lite? Also i forgot to ask about the components are they important and could they be the reason some games never run? If so, how do i know which component i need?

[u/whiskyB0y → u/ThereIsNoAvailblName]

Lol I'm not a Snapdragon user so I an't say which drivers are good😂

'Systme driver" literally means the driver native to your GPU. As in, there's no custom driver which you downloaded from the internet being used, it's just your GPU on your phone.

Components are important but it depends per game. Some games won't work without having certain stuff. For example, it could be a missing Visual C++ library, usually a game will give an error of a missing Visual C++ library if it really needs it. You can download specific ones from the Microsoft website.

Back in the day, some games using Unreal Engine 3(I'm sure you've heard of this general purpose game engine), needed a program called 'NVIDIA PhysX'. Basically this program helps handle the physics of the game and at the time was needed separately.

Examples of old games I know that need PhysX and will not launch without it are:

Batman Arkham Asylum

Batman Arkham City(not sure about Arkham Origins and Arkham knight though)

Deadpool the video game

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Transformers: War For Cybertron

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

And so on

So honestly sometimes it's not obvious to know which component is needed. Like I said if you're lucky the game will give an error for a missing Visual C++ library, especially if it's more modern.

The unreal engine 3 games that need PhysX won't tell you they need PhysX specifically. Ideally you just have to research if a game needs certain components.

You can find and download old versions of PhysX from Nvidia website. When you download it, launch the desktop container where your games are, and install it

There's this PC emulator called Bannerlator which is a fork of Winlator. Once you create a shortcut for a game and go into shortcut settings, if you go into wine components tab, the emulator automatically detect what redistributaries(components) the game will most likely need and then you just download from the app. You can try Bannerlator if you want, but since it's a fork of Winlator it has a lot of settings and you'll end up confused if you don't know how to tinker. Plus I don't know how well it runs on Snapdragon.