I know, hence why I said “addressed directly”, which 16 bit segments (like the major Windows portion living in vm86) couldn’t do, but they could still access it

I know, hence why I said “addressed directly”, which 16 bit segments (like the major Windows portion living in vm86) couldn’t do, but they could still access it through windows (lowercase w, and no pun intended). EMS and XMS essentially did what you describe for example.