This game is a bit of a white whale for me. It's one of my favorite games of all time and I like to keep it playable with me. Since it unfortunately wasn't made available on consoles back at the time, the Windows version is the only option. It seems to have worked many years ago on Crossover, when Macs still had Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs, but I haven't been able to find anyone claiming success on Apple Silicon. So, once you try to launch the game it greets you with the following message: "Freelancer did not detect a 3D capable video card in your System. If you have a 3D capable video card installed please try rebooting. You may need to reinstall the game." This is with "DirectX for Pre-Windows XP Games" installed and trying out various combinations of DXVK&ESync/MSync.
You can actually install and run the game on SteamDeck, which is the reason I'm not ruling it out as impossible in the first place. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?