A modder has found a way to turn their Nintendo 3DS into a remote desktop for their PC. This means the handheld can technically run PC games.
I say "technically" because it doesn't quite work right. In his demo videos, modder RetroZelda showed off his 3DS running World of Warcraft. In both videos, the frame rate is abysmal. His PC is visible in one demo so you can see the sharp difference in performance.
"The stuttering is caused by packet size and my poor network setup(this was running through 2 different routers where my pc and the 3DS are on different subnets, and one of the routers is old and crappy)," the modder said on GBATemp.
He admits that the slow wireless transfer for the 3DS might be a bottleneck as well. He's hoping to get a New 3DS and see if that improves the performance of the mod.
Even if the 3DS ran PC games smoothly, you'd still run into the issue of controls. For many PC games, the 3DS simply doesn't have enough buttons to properly play. I'm not really clear how you move the mouse cursor with the handheld, either.
Still, even if it's not going to be good for League of Legends or Battlefield 4, the mod still has value. Once the delay issues are sorted out, the mod would allow users to watch movies, use Windows apps or play games with simple controls. In the case of WoW, you could use the modded 3DS to do low-impact activities like Garrison tasks or dailies.
If you want to try out the mod yourself, you can find a download link here. You'll need to do some fiddling to get it to work, though.
"To use, set the server config file to set button input mappings, the port to use, and the destination screen size(mostly used for other platforms so just leave it at 400x240 because thats the 3DS' screen size)," the modder said. "The input mappings require win32 virtual key code int values(ascii decimal value)."
"The client is still a bit ugly, but once you set the server and port to connect to(D pad for server, and L and R keys to set port), press A to connect. Once connected, press SELECT to start video link. At any point, press start to exit the client. You can press ESC to stop the server. Connects/disconnects still aren't exactly clean, but oh well."
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