New MSX emulation paradigm

Well, that would be the approach. The very same emulation engine that current emulators have (no need to rewrite a single line of emulation code), but integrated with the OS like a VM, so an user could execute MSX binaries without having the feeling of running an emulator.

I think cross-development could benefit *a lot* of that.

I think what he means is to integrate msx binaries into the os,you simply call the exe or com file and automatically it runs without the emulator to show up,like it is running in the background or something.Imagine it like E-uae that runs under aros operating system.

Aros does not have direct support for 680x0 exe files that were made for amiga computer system,but with the integrated E-uae emulator on aros you can click on amiga old exe files and are executed on the fly on the host operating system.

Maybe something like that?

Also, doing this with msx isn't that useful as mixing atari/amiga with current linux/windows/mac systems.
Atari and Amiga had already an official own GUI system and knew about longer filenames and subdirs.

Trying to match all this with an MSX (which by default has textbased or fullscreen applications) and in its unexpaned form doesn't even know about subdirs (not to mention the 8.3 filenames limitation) is unnervingly complicating matters.

Manuel's suggestion is most likely the way to go if you want this...
Associate the files with a small launcher program that starts the (open)MSX emulator with the working directory as DirAsDisk.
If you really want to map your real HD onto an MSX view then you'll have to develop your own diskrom+dos2-hack which can perform these translations into a native msx internal BDOS format. Good Luck!

No, they are all emulators!

They mimic the internal workings of the MSX machines, thus resulting in the same external behavior.
With simulation you are only trying to have the external reactions of the system to be as realistic as possible, without caring for the real internals guts of the system!
This allows simulators to get away with looking at the system from a much higher level.For instance, a flight-simulator doesn't do the internal workings of calculating all the movements of air-molecules being pushed aside by the plane etc

Of course, it kind of depends on where you draw the border between internal systems and external behavior.
If you want to draw the border at the electric signals (connecting a real TV, real cartridges and all) then maybe the FPGA OCM is the only real emulator.
However you can not connect a real external MSX keyboard,cassette player or MSX printer and the V9958 "emulation" is not completely working as the real stuff, so even with your border definition it is a crippled emulator .

Blue/Open/fMSX etc are all emulators. Usually people use the word 'simulator' if it doesn't mimic the underlying hardware, which all MSX emulators do. For example these old LCD handheld game simulators are simulators because the hardware is not emulated, they just recreated the game and made it look like the original.
Where you draw the line between simulator and emulator is just a theoretical (and to be honest quite uninteresting) discussion.

And an emulator IS a virtual machine!