Just googled that - so if I understand correctly, it emulates Linux on a real Windows PC and then launches the software through WINE?

Presumably the idea here is to run 16 bit applications in an x64 environment and/or get some of those troublesome late 90s games running without emulating a full system? Have to admit, for the few things I can't get working on Win10, I've got an emulated Pentium 300 MMX (emulating some comedy mobile chip that Intel probably didn't sell many of) running 98SE.

Which game used BoxedWINE?

[edit] I think that Centur was referring to the original suggestion of running a virtual PC environment running Win95 - which would have horrific licencing costs.

I forget which game uses BoxedWine, But it's probably Voodoo Kid.

Yes, but it does not aim to emulate the entire Linux kernel, only the syscalls that Wine needs.

Yes, it's Voodoo Kid.

Interesting - might give that a go and see how it handles some of the more graphically intensive hard to run games (time for another attempt to get Wallace and Gromit in Project Zoo running). I'm hoping that as it's only emulating the syscalls that there's not much CPU overhead.

And Voodoo Kid - makes sense - it's from that nasty 95-98 period of PC gaming where stuff without native NT support is a nightmare to get running.

Wine Is Not Emulation. It's a translator; taking the system calls and making them work on a massive framework.

...Go figure that Boxedwine would be doing that.

And the ironic part is that Wine uses these syscalls to more efficiently implement portions of the Windows APIs... Inception 2.0, but hey, it works well enough for early Windows games at least.

Yep - WinterSnowfall is right - I meant the syscalls it's making to the Linux kernel, which presumably don't use that much overhead.

If this gets Project Zoo running, I will be seriously impressed - it's literally the only game that I've failed to get going (it needed a 600mhz processor minimum and I've always had sound issues with virtual PCs - apart from the Oracle one, which then took away 3d acceleration support)

Hmmm, Win95 OS was only something like 80Mb, setting up drivers and getting it to work with say VirtualBox and all dependencies wouldn't seem too hard; Better yet having a 'game' as a drive you just plug in and use would allow you to play any games you'd want while keeping all saves in a single COW drive.

This sounds like a good idea overall with Windows 10/11 going to break compatibility to hell on contant updates, instead you'd have a clean base system and as long as the VM works the games should too... Plus extra compression, optimization, etc...

Though you'd probably have several VM's. DosBox, Win 3.11, Win95, Win XP and Win7... But i'd be for it.

Sure it does. Sadly that is not the problem.
The problem is the cost of implementing that solution and the return of investment. It does not seem cost-effective.

Vitrualbox doesn't have 3d acceleration for the early directx or windows and the last time I checked they had broke it for XP and possibly Windows 7.

I remember trying a game in a VM on virtualbox with accelleration, it was 'experimental' and then the graphics were off by like 2 inches on the screen (a model in once place, the weapon/items held in the next square to the left, etc).

Hmmm... how many full 3D games are there for win95 that require that compability? Beyond MS flight simulator 98 and a Dos/Win of an apache helicopter game (that ran better in Dos anyways) i'm not sure. Actually i remember a lot more FMV's than i do games with acceleration...
Taking 30 minutes to install 95 on a virtual drive, install a few files, and then make it a master is too much work? Hmmm...

If it didn't have COW then differences for your saves would be more difficult, unless those were mounted as say the S drive. After that, all games would just be installed to the original using the COW and you'd only distribute the COW file... One game per module, as though it's the only game installed, saves saved to S would carry over easily enough, likely Fat16 (unless you think you'd exceed 4Gb in saves...)

You would also have to sell a Windows 95 licence along with the game; or sell the virtual environment separately. That's the bit that would make this un-economical.

You cannot just give away a Windows licence - Microsoft tend to react badly to that type of thing!

People should be aware that Virtualbox* or other VM don't do early 3D acceleration properly or there's some other flaw so it's helpful to know before they waste time when they find an old game that doesn't work easily on modern systems.

* it only started at DirectX 8 on WindowsXP when it did it.