webvm VS ruffle

Shameless self-promotion: https://webvm.io

Powered by a x86->Wasm JIT. Technical writeup: https://labs.leaningtech.com/blog/webvm-server-less-x86-virt...

Developer here. CheerpX for Flash runs the Pepper API version of Flash, and you're correct about the license. However, we don't do full Linux emulation just to run Flash - we emulate PPAPI and run the Flash player in an x86 JIT (CheerpX).

Yuri talks about CXFF's architecture here:

https://youtu.be/7JUs4c99-mo?t=1045

...but if you wanted full Linux system emulation, we got it! https://webvm.io

webvm has Tailscale sockets-over-WebSockets for networking: https://github.com/leaningtech/webvm

https://webvm.io/ supports WebVM runs x86 binaries in WASM on any browser w/ ("CheerpX includes an x86-to-WebAssembly JIT compiler, a virtual block-based file system, and a Linux syscall emulator") and for external sockets there's Tailscale networking.

IIUC that means an SSH client in a WebVM can connect to a (tailscale (wg)) VPN mesh

lets pre-load it into a https://github.com/leaningtech/webvm/blob/main/dockerfiles/debian_mini

Just to show how complex these can get look at this https://webvm.io/

Funnily enough, I believe that's completely achievable with enough time spent on it (probably a few weeks of an engineer working full time).

We have technology like WebVM [1] (from leaningtech / CheerP) or Copy86 [2] that already allows x86 machine code execution/emulation on the web. If you add an OCI client layer on top that is executable in the browser, it should be possible to run Docker containers in the browser.

[1] https://webvm.io/

[2] https://copy.sh/v86/

The memories…

I often wondered what would happen to those wonderful Orisinal mini games after Flash's death, without actually checking out the site. Would Ferry Halim find the time to port them to "HTML5"? Would they just… disappear forever?

It turns out that they know run in Ruffle[1], a Rust/WASM based Flash Player emulator I've never heard of (or forgotten about). The handful of them that I have tested work flawlessly.

[1] https://ruffle.rs/

shrug It finds its uses. It's just not that overstated.

sandspiel is quite popular and is built using WASM: https://sandspiel.club/

Google Earth - https://blog.chromium.org/2019/06/webassembly-brings-google-...

Ruffle (the "make Flash run safely" tool) - https://ruffle.rs/

Ableton's Learning Synths - https://learningsynths.ableton.com/

etc etc. It's just hard to tell when something is using WASM when it "just works" and is indistinguishable from optimized JavaScript

I was amazed that the site still runs, apparently still using the same engine.

But it seems that it was a flash site (of course), and archive.org seems to replace Flash Player with "Ruffle" [1]. Either that, or someone of Tobin's team replaced Flash with Ruffle >= 2019.

[1] https://ruffle.rs/

Out of curiosity a couple months ago I wondered if I could play my old Proximity flash game on Newgrounds from the browser within the Quest 3 VR headset, and it worked great!

That led me to do a little searching, and I discovered that originally the game didn't work in Ruffle, as I apparently did something with the play game button that wasn't normal. But someone put a fix in it back in 2020[1] in order to get my game working again. That was pretty neat. Felt kind of nice that people still cared enough about my old game to make sure it still works in an emulator.

Still working on a more in-depth sequel (using Monogame), and I'm way overdue to make a new web version of the original. Might knock that out once I get closer to getting the sequel out there.

[1]: https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/pull/1024

i believe it's using Ruffle[0] and that's already happened[1]

[0] https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle

This is all using a really cool Flash emulator called https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle