We have emulators that can run programs that are decades old to run on our modern machines. DOSBox is a great example where you can run DOS games or other programs in a window on your desktop. It takes a while to learn what commands you need to type to run your programs but it's very great.

While DOSBox is a very good tool to run DOS programs, I've always wondered if there's an emulator to run early Windows programs on modern Windows. Well, there isn't upon to my knowledge. There are various alternatives though. You can run DOS-based versions of Windows through DOSBox like the Windows 9x series, however this requires installing an ISO through DOSBox and I don't know if running games through early Windows versions through DOSBox would work fine. There's also a similar way through running virtual machines although this requires a similar process like running Windows through DOSBox. At last, there's running program straight to your version of Windows to which results can vary.

While some old Windows games and programs can work fine on modern Windows, others can't or can't work at all and others are a mixed bag. Trying to run old Windows programs on modern Windows perfectly requires some modifications to handle. While it maybe easy to change the compatibility settings on the program through properties, some require more than that. And even in the end, results can sometimes vary. And then I found something.

When I looked on google to find the best way to run old Windows programs, particularly games, on modern Windows, I found an interesting result. There's a thing called dgVoodoo 2 which consists of DLLs and a Setup program. You copy the DLLs and the program into the same folder where the game executable is located. You open the setup program and you apply changes you want to see. You open the game and see if the changes are good.

When I found dgVoodoo, I thought of a game that I have been trying to get to work properly for a few months: Jane's USAF. I've played this game for some time on my laptop and I'm trying to get it working on my new desktop for quite some time. I have already made some changes to USAF such as Tackleberry's patch and the UI fix but I'm still having some issues. The first problem I have is that the physics models for the jets seem to be a bit awkward. For some reason, when I roll a plane for quite a while, it yaws funny and it gains speed and the results can be funny:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgz475qbF3Q

While I've had this problem on playing it on my laptop prior from upgrading to Windows 10 from 7, I didn't think it was a big issue. However, when I started playing USAF on my new desktop (which comes with Windows 10 pre-installed) I had a new problem. For some reason some of the surface textures were missing while in flight and it occurs on every map:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9_e38A4TvU

When I placed the dgVoodoo 2 setup exe and the dlls in the USAF folder and made some changes, here were the results. The texture issue I had was fixed as if the game wouldn't load the textures before and the rolling issue was dealt with as if there was a compatibility issue with the physics engine. The game was always in a 800x600 windows which I didn't mind some but there was also what looked like to be a 15 fps lock. I know USAF required a single core processor to run correctly to which otherwise there would be a severe frame drop but that was even way worse down to 1 fps. I'm not sure if the DLLs affected the one-core batch file I placed to prevent the 1 fps lock.

Anyways, I tried to place some random changes with the dgVoodoo 2 setup program but the only changes it seemed that I could make is putting it into full screen or a window (the former of which makes the main menu invisible). You can run the setup program and apply changes to an app data folder or the folder to where you copied it too. Unfortunately, the program doesn't let me apply any changes to the USAF folder however it can with the app data folder and does make some differences with the USAF game.

I don't know what else to do and I'm asking for someone who knows how to make changes with USAF to make it work properly. Here's the download to dgVoodoo 2: http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2.html P.S. Windows 10 recently made an update to Windows Defender into finding malware and it marked the dgVoodoo 2 setup program as malware so if you open the folder after extracting and Windows automatically deletes it, disable any internet connection and Windows Defender. After that, extract the folder with the EXE again and copy it to your game folder. Go to Windows Defender settings and mark the EXE as an exclusion and remember these steps if you want to copy the EXE to somewhere else where you want it to run or if you have another program that Windows is also marking as malware.

Hello,

I must disappoint you. I was, as my synonym shows, born in 1970. I grow up with the early home computers and have been flightsim enthusiast, since the early days of this genre.

I have one of the greatest simulation collections, which I know of. I also want to use many of them today, but as you mentioned above, its no problem to play the old ones of the DOS era ( use D-Fend Reloaded - its better then DOS box naked ), but there isn't any real good way to play the ones of the early windows era.

I have made a special machine for this purpose, based on an ASRock AM2NF3-VSTA board with an AMD Athlon II X2 250 (3Ghz) and a Geforce 6800GT AGP. There is also a Voodoo II SLI onboard. That's the best hardware, you could run those older sim on.

For this board its possible to get driver for Windows 98 SE, too. So I run a dualboot with XP and W98 on it, to get most of my old stuff running. Sometimes you could use nGlide for 3DFX (it also runs on Win 98 without any problem) to get much better resolutions as with the Voodoo SLI, but sometimes the simulations don't like nGlide and only run with the Voodoo hardware.

The only simulator I can't get running with its 3D acceleration is Hind from the Frontline Fighters Pack. It only runs in software mode, but the other two titels (DI F-16 / DI Apache) run with the voodoo hardware and nGlide. So you could see, there is no right way to get old sims running. Even with the "correct hardware" its a lot of luck.

Have searched a long time for another way to get those old simulators running on modern systems, but never really perfect nor without any troubles. I have really, really tried alot over the whole year 2015. It was the first stage of my homepit project, to get as many of those old simulators, as possible, running too.

Have now two machines running in my homepit. One for the old simulations (the mentioned one) and one for the newer things, running Windows 7 64. Those two systems are connected to the pit via LAN to a third "cockpit interface computer".

P.S: Original USAF runs perfect on this system with W98. You could also use the Tackleberrys patch running it with XP. I know that the patch was designed for W7, but I had more luck to play it stable using the patch with XP.

Well forget dgVoodoo 2! It looks like I got it fixed thanks to the help of WineD3D: http://adolfintel.com/?p=wined3d/index.frag

Apparently there was a compatibility problem involving DirectX 12 (Windows 10 version) not running USAF properly. There are no missing terrain textures and the framerate isn't locked at 15 FPS. However, there are some dips in the framerate (sometimes freezing for a second or more at very certain events) and there framerate maybe locked to 30 FPS (I'm guessing; I don't know; maybe that's normal to a legit DirectX 6-7.0 machine). Also, the game takes about 30 seconds for me to launch but other than that, it looks good to me.

Viper1970: Thanks for your advice and I understand, not all PCs are the exact same. Almost all-day yesterday and today, I've been trying to figure out how to get USAF working the way I wan't it too. I further investigated on the capabilites of dgVoodoo 2 and I tried out VirtualBox with a Windows 2000 iso but both option had at least one downside or two. In my online research, I went from looking up in Google; "Windows 9x Emulator" and "DirectX 6.1" (Latest version of DX during USAF launch) before ending up looking in "Direct 3D Wrapper" where I found WineD3D, downloaded it, extracted it, copied the dlls according to the 'read me' and I got what I wanted. In the end, I guess all that time trying to find the right results from running USAF had brought me somewhere and it was probably worth it. You learn from your mistakes, or somebody else's (in my case, the PC).

I guess now the "true" Jane's USAF experience is complete ("true" as in: this isn't exactly how it's meant to be but oh well).