SimCity 4 on an ARM64 system (Windows 11 on ARM)

[zahrul3 472]

1. Has anyone attempted to play SimCity 4 on an ARM64 system using Windows 11 on ARM emulation? 

2. does it run?

3. if it does run, is it buggy or not? does it CTD now and then or does it run smoothly?

4. is there the possibility of unknown bugs we do not know yet, arising from the differences between an ARM64 architecture and the x86 architecture SimCity 4 was designed for?

[rsc204 21,836]

Haven’t tried it but I seriously doubt it would run to begin with. Even among games of its era, SC4 uses some very specific APIs for graphics that make it harder than most games compatibility wise.

If you got it to run, performance will likely suck. Because ARM just does things differently it requires a lot of brute force to emulate x86.

All theoretically possible, but someone would need to create the emulation layer for x86 and DirectX that was solid enough to make it playable. I’m not aware of any such project, but then ARM is so niche it’s possible it’s flown under the radar.

Compare that to MacOS, where the game has been updated both for x64 and then ARM CPUs, performance is stunning. But you can’t run Mac apps under Windows and I can’t see how you could get a copy of the Mac game to use even if you could. 

[zahrul3 472]

Ahh I see, I believe its something that time will tell, eventually