Terragen on Android for Fun

WAS · May 28, 2019, 01:27:04 PM

This render took 17 hours at MPD 0.3 AA 0.2.

Rendered on LG G8 ThinQ (Snapdragon 855) Android 9.0 in Limbo x86 on Windows XP 32-bit with Terragen 2.5.5.0 (CNET Installer)

Unfortunately, I can only get Windows XP to run under qemu32, which is EXTREMELY slow. Like a snails pase. Windows XP won't launch under pentium2 or pentium3 or even under x64 under SandyBridge or Haswell or something. It sucks. I could get much better performance. For example, I have windows 98 running under Pentium3 emulation and is faster than any 98 machine I owned. Lol

Effectively the emulated machine had 333mhz single core/thread (from what system was reporting for actual clock speeds during loads) and 512mb RAM.

To me this is really cool because previously on my Stylus 2, I couldn't even get anything to launch on XP, let alone TG (I tried).

Limbo x86: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.limbo.emu.main/

You'll need to install Windows XP on a FAT image in QEMU on PC/Linux, and than move that image to your phone. I setup the XP install with TG, and made the test project on my PC as I knew the emulation would be slow on mobile.

WAS · May 28, 2019, 01:37:55 PM

I'd like to add that Windows 10 x64 is able to run on Android with Limbo x86 when you switch to x64 architecture and pick SandyBridge or something, but from what I understand it won't boot unless your device is rooted. I can't root my phone currently until I actually own it so I can't test modern TG on it. But if someone wants to give it I go, I do encourage them. In 10 years, this might actually be a viable option to run TG on the go with a Bluetooth keyboard or something on the go. "Lol"

Additionally, if you have a device with a KVM kernal, you can enable KVM and get vastly superior emulation/virtualization.

Njen · May 29, 2019, 01:48:45 PM

This is the geekiest (and coolest) thing I've seen in a long time. I showed a bunch of guys around the office this, and they all agree too. Well done!

WAS · May 29, 2019, 01:51:17 PM

Quote from: Njen on May 29, 2019, 01:48:45 PM
This is the geekiest (and coolest) thing I've seen in a long time. I showed a bunch of guys around the office this, and they all agree too. Well done!

I'd love to figure out why Limbo is so slow. It's not actually a hardware limiting thing, it's in the code, as my phone doesn't even warm up while rendering TG, let alone just running XP. If they ever figure out what's actually limiting the system on ARM architecture, it could see vastly superior emulation just like on PC with QEMU, which is also mostly emulation and not virtualization. Give it 5-10 years and guest windows OS might actually be practical on Android.

Here's a couple screen grabs I forgot to upload off my phone. This was a diff project on a diff XP image that I stripped of almost everything but what's needed for TG. Tiny bit better performance.

archonforest · May 29, 2019, 03:23:38 PM

This is crazy cool. TG on a phone!

Oshyan · May 29, 2019, 04:07:58 PM

I'm impressed, but holding out for seeing photos of the actual real-world phone running this (i.e. on its LCD), rather than in-OS screenshots.

- Oshyan

WAS · May 29, 2019, 04:30:10 PM

Quote from: Oshyan on May 29, 2019, 04:07:58 PM
I'm impressed, but holding out for seeing photos of the actual real-world phone running this (i.e. on its LCD), rather than in-OS screenshots.

- Oshyan

I can do that, I still got my old phone.

After I wrap up setting up this 486-style Win 95 image for games that won't run on 98 and up I'll take a short video of the snails pace. Lol

WAS · May 30, 2019, 12:23:28 AM

Here we go. Sorry for sounding zombified, I was just done with that. I spent 2 hours trying to setup some other stuff and ended up loosing 720p somehow, triggering check disk, blah blah blah lol. Even Firefox icon broke hahaha

RichTwo · May 30, 2019, 12:25:49 PM

Dang - I have an iPhone, so I guess I can't play...

Oshyan · May 30, 2019, 03:13:33 PM

Hah, awesome. Thanks!

- Oshyan

digitalguru · May 30, 2019, 04:06:17 PM

one day we will all be sitting on the beach rendering Terragen on our tablets

but small steps for now

WAS · May 30, 2019, 11:09:07 PM

Indeed. I am wondering if id have better luck getting Windows 10 ARM64 installed and begging Matt for TG source to compile against it. One day, when this isn't my main phone.

I did some digging in Limbo x86 and found that without KVM it effectively only ever uses 1 core, at a fraction of hosts speed. Despite settings. It's possible a KVM kernel of this ROM is released someday but who knows.