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The guest instances are fully 386 Enhanced Mode instances of Windows 3.1. Windows 3.1 (and Windows/386 and Windows 3.0) is implemented as an 80386 DPMI server,
by trollbridge 1y ago
The guest instances are fully 386 Enhanced Mode instances of Windows 3.1. Windows 3.1 (and Windows/386 and Windows 3.0) is implemented as an 80386 DPMI server, much like the DOS4GW you used to play Doom, and the the actual GUI code is a DPMI client. Windows 95 is also a DPMI server.
Windows 3.x could also run in “standard mode”, where it used a 16-bit only DPMI server. The Windows GUI system could run in real mode or as a DPMI client.
As far as “nested virtualisation”… Windows 3.1’s DOS windows could actually in turn run more instances of Windows 3.1, because Windows/386 relied on virtual 8086 mode only and Windows 3.x used DPMI which can be nested.