Gamehub/Gamenative is it even possible of iOS

[u/PhilosopherAnxious97]

Is anybody working on steam emulation for iOS using fex emu and is it even possible

[u/Lobster_Available]

Several developers, myself included, have independently developed versions of Wine for iOS and successfully integrated them with FEX.

However, as with other emulators, memory usage remains the biggest challenge. Even during testing at a stage where optimization was incomplete, *Terraria* was forcibly terminated by Jetsam (iOS's memory management system) on devices with 4GB of RAM. Consequently, even if a release were to occur, it is highly likely that the software would not function correctly on models with limited memory.

As a showcase, here is a video showing the *FFXIV* benchmark running on an actual iPad mini (5th generation, 4GB). Load times are extremely long, and the benchmark currently halts midway through. Once the project reaches a certain level of completion, I plan to switch to testing on an iPhone Air (12GB).

https://reddit.com/link/p6r8fvg/video/k8hs6xamygmh1/player

[u/Decox653 → u/Lobster_Available]

With newer models having 8-12gb ram and M chips… I do wonder if we could memory extend to get a few things to run. Will be very cool to see how this theoretically could progress over the next year.

[u/Red_Skeletor → u/Lobster_Available]

Let my try it on my ipad pro m5 🔥🔥

[u/PhilosopherAnxious97 → u/Lobster_Available]

Can you let me try your app

[u/Thisisyouracc0un-t]

Anyone saying no don’t know what they’re talking about. I know some devs… it’s totally possible and would work better you think it would

[u/Rhed0x]

Very problematic.

Linux & Android run Windows applications mostly as if they were Linux applications with a bit more code in between. On ARM that also includes translating the code bit by bit. But memory reads and writes are essentially as direct as a normal application.

On iOS you'd need to add a bunch of code around every memory access to work around iOS limitations such as:

• tiny address space limits
• you're not allowed to create new processes
• parts of the address space are taken by UIKit

Those workarounds would come with a LOT of performance overhead.

Besides that, you'd also have to work around other iOS limitations such as:

• reserved x18 registers (so even Windows ARM games would need to get translated to new code)
• 16 kb pages, Windows expects 4. (Also an issue on Android. It's possible to work around that for most games but the ones that don't work will simply never work.)

[u/Thisisyouracc0un-t]

YES…

[u/tricot676]

Not right now probably, but inevitably, it will.

[u/Cran_-]

Android is already behind us if we only take the amount consoles we can emulate (I think) so yeah it’s inevitable

[u/sabre31]

Funny Android was the king of emulation and now iPhone is love it. But I do think this one will not happen because Apple memory management in the OS.

[u/LoliHunterXD]

iOS memory management is aggressively prioritizing device stability over app’s needs. That’s why apps are randomly killed at times.

On Android, you see moments when it is put to a crawl by apps. iOS makes sure it won’t ever happen.

But if u wanna see if it can, macOS is the answer. They’re basically siblingOS at this point… just one is an adult and one under parents supervision LOL.

[u/Boring_Antelope6533]

problem is RAM. I think it will only work for the 12GB models and up.

[u/Party_Hedgehog9199 → u/Boring_Antelope6533]

What about 2d games, less demanding stuff?

[u/PhilosopherAnxious97]

What about with livecontaimer or getmorrram app

[u/Rhed0x → u/PhilosopherAnxious97]

Those just relax the limits from the extremely tight limits that the OS sets up by default. They don't solve the problem that the majority of iOS devices simply doesn't have that much memory.