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.

FEX 2405 implements support for the SMSW instruction, which is rarely used but turns out the original Far Cry game requires SMSW support. Now that FEX 2405 emulates the instruction, the game gets to the menu screen when running on ARM. But trying to go in-game will still stall... Quite an achievement nevertheless seeing the legendary Far Cry running on 64-bit ARM Linux thanks to FEX:

The release notes explain:

"This instruction isn’t too notable since all it does on recent x86 CPUs is return the same data no matter what, but legacy CPUs it was useful for checking if x87 was supported. As this is considered a system level instruction, FEX didn’t implement it originally but we finally found a game that uses it. The original Far Cry game from 2004 uses this instruction for some reason. Now that we have implemented the instruction the game at least gets to the menus but seems to still stall out when going in-game. Kind of neat!"

FEX 2405 also now supports OpenGL and Vulkan thunking without forwarding X11, enhanced REP MOVS when memcpy TSO is disabled, fixing various instruction emulation, and other fixes.

Downloads and more details on the FEX 2405 release for emulating x86/x86_64 binaries on ARM64 Linux can be found via FEX-Emu.com.