Play AAA PC video games on your x86 based Android device with Console OS

There have been a recent influx of Atom x86 based Android devices. If you need a phone or tablet and you're a gamer - you owe it to yourself to get an x86 based Android device because you could be playing games such as (Unreal Engine) Batman: Arkham Asylum, Bioshock Infinite, Borderlands 1 & 2, Deus Ex 1 & 2 Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3 - or perhaps (Havok Engine) Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout3, Fallout New Vegas among others. You'll even be able to hook up a mouse and keyboard if you want to, or your XBox style gaming controller.

How? By using Console OS. Console OS is a new operating system for your Android device. It will actually replace your Android OS. Console OS will have built in support for the Unreal, Havok and Unity gaming engines. Don't worry, you can do everything you can do now on your Android device but now you can do so much more! Console OS is a fork of Google's Android OS. Console OS is Android re-designed to give the user more power and abilities. It will support Google Play and all apps, as well as all ARM based apps.

Console OS can be installed on or used to dual boot with any x86 device, such as your Windows 8 desktop, laptop or tablet or x86 based phone. They are working on support for all Microsoft Surface tablets as well. Console OS has partnered with Intel to ensure compatability with the new cheap and powerful Minnowboard Max motherboards so we should see this OS being shipped on real world hardware soon.

It's coming in December of 2014. Console OS will offer a free version and a 20 dollar paid version. You'll simply download the free version for instance and it will install itself to your android device. It will overwrite your existing Android OS so back up your data first. For all other x86 devices, you have the choice to install natively or dual boot.

For more info see here:
www.androidpolice.com...

and here: consoleos.com...

a reply to: JohnPhoenix

I already have and android based device. I can't wait! Thanks for the info.

a reply to: swanne

Just be sure it's an x86 based android device, not the kind that uses an ARM processor. Console OS will not work with a non x86 device.

a reply to: JohnPhoenix

Hm, good point.

is the samsung galaxy s4 an x86 device? how can I find out and make sure my next device is an x86 device? would this info be in my settings menu under the device information?

Thats very interesting. But as for playing those games on a mobile device, I don't see much functionality there. I sure wouldn't want to plug up a mouse and keyboard to my phone. Then you have to think about GPU and vRAM on a mobile device. It will be interesting though.

Some of those titles are pretty demanding for full fledged gaming machines. This can't be as good as it seems. Maybe on the lowest settings at 24fps. That's all I'd expect. Still pretty amazing though.

those are only old AAAs... I wonder how its going to old up to new AAAs.

I'll just stick to my Nvidia shield Tablet and let my gaming rig do the hard work and stream any game I own.
Nonetheless a step in the right direction. Another option is to use Steam streaming which will be coming to Android very soon.

www.pcgamer.com...

originally posted by: NWOMGWTF
Thats very interesting. But as for playing those games on a mobile device, I don't see much functionality there. I sure wouldn't want to plug up a mouse and keyboard to my phone. Then you have to think about GPU and vRAM on a mobile device. It will be interesting though.

I worked on the GPU drivers for mobile devices. They do things a bit differently from the desktop systems. Main difference is that the entire screen is rendered piecewise using 2D tiles, so there isn't a dedicated z-buffer, thus saving video memory. But they do support the latest OpenGL features like shaders. Then you can get an HDMI cable that plugs your mobile phone into a HD television, and you can plug a keyboard into your phone, so you get a mobile PC. There's a USB stick called CottonCandy that takes this to the extreme. I've seen emulators for the Ultra 64 running on a mobile device, which freaked me out a little, because all that logic used to require a high-end board on a SGI workstation. Even Indy workstations only did software rendering.

originally posted by: Aldakoopa
Some of those titles are pretty demanding for full fledged gaming machines. This can't be as good as it seems. Maybe on the lowest settings at 24fps. That's all I'd expect. Still pretty amazing though.

I listed the games because they reflect the abilities of the engine. I do not know all those games will work or play well but I'm assuming the compatibility layers they have for those engines are backwards compatible. This is what they say from their updates page:

We’re today announcing that we will support, embrace, and work with all three of the industry’s most popular game engine and middleware solutions on the market today. Unity, Havok Project Anarchy, and Unreal Engine 4 will all be supported by us on Console OS.

While we have some glitches and bugs to squash before we demo them in public, we’re well on our way to delivering the first, and only true console-quality gaming experience using Android on the PC.

Our support for all three engines will be focused on scale – empowering game developers to use their existing Android game code base, and optimize it to deliver visuals typically assigned to traditional gaming consoles and traditional PCs. PCs and 2-in-1’s really sit in-between what tablets can do today, and what game consoles can do tomorrow.

For Havok, and Unreal Engine 4, they’ll run natively in x86 NDK code alongside Dalvik and ART. For Unity, we’re taking a bit of a different approach to supporting their SDK – massaging ARM code to do something truly unique on x86. We’re fusioning ARM NDK game code while passing through higher-quality graphics to OpenGL ES 3. This is made possible by our native ARM translator, that allows for both old, and new ARM-only apps to excel on Console OS PCs and PC Tablets.

The result with Unity and our upcoming Console OS SDK Add-on for Unity, is a game that only Console OS-class machines can drive, even though the code under the hood is being dynamically translated.

Bottom line, this is an important last step in our Kickstarter. It commits to game developers that making games scale up to Console OS hardware won’t be difficult. We’re going to start working directly with all three companies to help make the entire Android gaming ecosystem even better.

consoleos.com...