felix86 emulator brings Steam gaming to PCs with RISC-V chips

RISC-V architecture has made a lot of progress in recent years, but when I write about new RISC-V hardware I often add a note that the platform tends to lag behind x86_64 and ARM when it comes to software support.

One possible workaround? Emulation. The felix86 emulator lets you run some x86 applications on computers with RISC-V chips. And recent updates even make it possible to install the Steam game client on Linux PCs with RISC-V chips so that you can run PC games that use Steam DRM.

Steam running on a Milk-V Jupiter RISC-V PC with the felix86 emulator (image via GamingOnLinux)

That said, there's a difference between getting a game to run and ensuring that it can run at playable speeds.

In a June 30th blog post, the Felix team explains that it's now possible to use the emulator to install Steam and load native Linux games like The Witcher 2 as well as Windows titles like The Witcher 3 and Crysis, which make use of Valve's Proton compatibility layer for running many Windows games on Linux PCs.

At this point, the team notes that these games "just started working, so we haven't had enough time to profile or optimize them yet. So don't expect great performance yet!"

It's also worth noting that not all RISC-V hardware is equal. A screenshot in that blog post shows The Witcher 3 running on a Milk-V Jupiter single-board computer with a Spacemit M1/K1 octa-core RVA22 processor. But I suspect performance will vary greatly depending on the specific RISC-V processor you're using.

via GamingOnLinux

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