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It's a good week for Rapier I art. We posted an uncommon 3D render of a fan model a few days ago, and now we've got a top down line art sketch of the CF-117. The rotary neutron gun is a bit long, but the ship portions are pretty good overall. This type of drawing was really big in the late '90s, so I'm surprised we haven't seen more of this over the years. bagera3005 is certainly a fan of this art style with thousands of Star Trek ships and other similar designs in his gallery. He's also made a Kilrathi-inspired ship, pictured below. It's kind of a funky cross between a Goran and a Sorthak by my eye.

My version of Wing Commander Rapier from the movie

If you'd like to see more cool WC line art, be sure to check out our prior updates.

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The iPhone/iPad app iDOS 2 has been in the news this week since it was announced that the program will be coming down soon per Apple's app store guidelines. The company has always been very leery of emulators and programs that can run other code or operating systems (like Windows 3.1!), and it's honestly surprising that the program has been allowed to exist on the platform for this long as it is. While it's still available at the time of this writing, it might not be around much longer. Nevertheless, there's been a surge of downloads, and people have been posting about different games that they've gotten to work. Here's a picture that Steve Makofsky took playing Wing Commander 1 on his iPad, which is pretty darn cool!

Kinda shocked it worked so easily - iDOS2 running vintage Wing Commander.

This is by no means the first app to enable this kind of activity, but most have been relatively short lived.

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots Federation ALERT*
Onionhead gamma strain is now available in selected industrial anarchy systems.
Following the Kumo Council's initiative, enough product was manufactured to supply approximately 10% of all industrial-based markets controlled by anarchic factions. Unlike previous versions of onionhead, this variant is not listed as a rare commodity.
Adalyn Cross, a journalist for Vox Galactica, reported:
"Onionhead gamma strain is being marketed to the public for medicinal use, but most customers are under no illusions regarding its real benefits. The Coalition for Legalisation claims that it is 'no more harmful or addictive than alcohol or coffee, with potential psychological and palliative benefits'."
"This has not prevented many authorities, especially in the Federation, from demanding that it remain universally outlawed. It is currently illegal in all but anarchy jurisdictions.

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots Federation ALERT*
Kayode Tau has been elected as prime consul for the Marlinists, following a successful data delivery initiative.
The candidate from the Free Marlinist Movement faction received more public votes than rival nominee Verity Dexter. His campaign was supported by deliveries of anomalous bulk scan data and unusual encrypted files in greater quantities.
Prime Consul Tau will now serve as the lead ambassador for the Marlinist Colonies in all dealings with the superpowers. He gave this statement to the media:
"The Marlinist Consulate will act to preserve our colonies' independence, and improve diplomatic relations with the rest of the galaxy. Let me be clear – we do not represent the extremist views of Neo-Marlinism. Our consuls will assist all efforts to eliminate the NMLA."
In the Marlinist Parliament, Minister Aaron Whyte protested that ignoring the Neo-Marlinist fringe was

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots Federation ALERT*
The Pleiades Concordat has requested deliveries to support the Far God cult in the Panjabell system.
Members of the secretive Thargoid-worshipping sect have gathered in huge numbers, and are preparing to outfit one or more megaships for religious purposes.
Although the cult has no official spokespeople, local newsfeeds carried a brief message from one of its senior members, known only as the First Herald of the Fifty-Eighth Chapter:
"The faithful have hidden in the shadows for too long. Now is the time to reach out and welcome the Far God, with the support of our friends in the Pleiades Concordat."
"The first megaship, the Testament, will be a missionary vessel to spread the word to all humankind. If we are blessed enough to obtain commodities for more megaships, these will be sent on a pilgrimage into deep space to commune with the Far God."
The Pleiades Concordat

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For the second time in as many weeks, a private space tour company has launched their first fully crewed vessel (and their billionaire founder) into space. This time they had the audacity to do it on a work day, so we've posted some nifty photos and video below for the people who couldn't watch live. Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket reached an altitude of about 66 miles and produced a similar brief period of weightlessness as the Virgin Galactic experience last week. Unlike Richard Branson's specialized type of jet plane, today's craft was a more traditional vertical rocket. It's been almost fifteen years since we first reported on their efforts, which once again highlights how challenging these milestones are to reach. In addition to space tourism, the company is also aiming to compete with SpaceX on moon missions in the future.

Beautiful launch from West Texas this morning. #NSFirstHumanFlight

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The Belgian Chess History website runs a remarkable blog where they analyze and dissect chess games in progress across a variety of film and television. They look at the chess board setups and discuss how the characters (often inexplicably) got into their situation. Wing Commander has been featured, and it got a characteristically brutal scrubbing. Not only do they hate the setup, they're not fond of the characters nor even the chess pieces! You can find the full Belgian Chess History article here.

LOAF actually researched and found the actual chess set used in the WC Movie a while back. He also put together a slightly more accurate placement of the pieces, pictured below.

LOAF: It's just not a situation anyone would reasonably get to. Unless Bishop, a man named after a chess piece with said piece painted on his Rapier, is particularly terrible at chess.

Belgian Chess History: The idiot on the table

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

More Federal factions are considering declaring independence following the recent conflict in the Azaladshu system.
Sofia Trevino, political journalist with The Federal Times, published an overview of the situation:
"When Azaladshu Free seceded in reaction to the government's surveillance laws, it inspired three other factions to do the same, making ten systems and a billion people independent. Superpowers routinely gain and lose systems via local politics, but this was a rare instance of member factions abandoning their fealty."
"The newly sovereign nations have severed all links with the Proactive Detection Bureau, so their communications are no longer being monitored. Despite broad public support for the Domestic Counter-Terrorism Act, many citizens still consider personal privacy to be a constitutional right."
"Dozens of other factions are now considering independence. This affects only a

Quote from No Man

Hello Everyone!

It’s been such a joy for us seeing all the new screenshots and videos shared by travellers since the Prisms update – the universe has never looked this good! Thank you so much to everyone documenting and sharing the worlds you encounter in your explorations. It is incredible to be on this journey together with such a passionate community.

Bytebeat Spotlight

One feature released with Prisms was ByteBeat track sharing, allowing players to save their favourite tunes to a portable player. We were curious to see what the musically creative among the community would make of this extra functionality, but we’ve been blown away by the response! A handful of talented creators have put together the very impressive Crescendo Project – a creative hub in Euclid where ByteBeat composers can share their creations, and visitors can collect the tracks for their Library.

Pipe to Paver by VeritasVelez

The Crescendo Project can

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a nifty old school Rapier I put together by FetzerJoshua. Art based on the Wing Commander Movie is kind of a special breed, and this one's no exception. Due to differences in the medium, most fans probably haven't spent nearly as much time staring at stills of the film ships, so it might not be obvious at first how much detail he got right. The layers to the fuselage, cockpit pylons, landing gear and even unusual missile placement are pretty good. I added a few reference shots below so you can compare. Not sure why it's on the beach, but why not?

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The Interstellar Health Organisation has published a preliminary analysis of onionhead gamma strain, a recreational drug also known as 'helix'.
"As with the alpha, beta and Lucan strains, the active component is derived from seeds produced by the onionhead flower native to the planet Panem. These contain alkaloid compounds that have a temporary psychoactive effect on human perceptions and cognitive functions."
"In the gamma strain, these compounds have been genetically modified using synthetic molecules of unknown origin. This has diluted the concentration of psychotropics, therefore producing less intense hallucinogenic episodes."
"The practical advantages of these modifications are twofold. First, they allow onionhead to be economically mass-produced using artificial environments rather than grown as natural crops. Second, the gamma strain is more hardy and able to survive for longer periods

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The enigmatic Thargoid-worshipping religious order is examined by Erik Gunnarson of the Wallglass Investigations Agency.
"Of all the myriad faiths practised across the galaxy, the Far God cult is one of the strangest and least understood. But in recent years it has grown from a fringe sect to a widespread religion."
"Its central tenet is that an unknowable being exists beyond our dimension – the Far God. What we call the Thargoids are its heralds, preparing for when it descends from hyperspace to instantly wipe out all life. This apocalyptic creed therefore attracts people who have nothing to live for, and who find purpose in awaiting armageddon."
"The cult has no official name or spokespeople, and its followers willingly replace their names with titles such as adherent, disciple and witness. This dehumanising approach includes its members wearing simple black robes and making their hive

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Mac has put together a nifty visual of an escort carrier cruising in the Freepsace engine. The core model comes from Klavs' collection, and the resulting image is a beauty. We wanted to share in case some people could use a new wallpaper image. There's some additional shots of some funkiness from a gameplay perspective, but even those shots look cool!

A viewer on my recent #wingcommander video commented about the Tarawa, which reminded me of my efforts to import her into #FreespaceOpen It has no shield impact anims, the bumpmaps are a little weird, and it cant fire. But it looks nice at least. The Tarawa model was from Klav's Wing Commander 3d model pack btw.

Oh ya, one more thing, how the Tarawa deals with itself exploding in FS is....really weird. She's a long way before I can have her ready for prime time.

Mac's other big hobby is his YouTube channel dedicated to sci-fi history. He's recently

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Destro has an update on the project to add Sega CD speech to Wing Commander 1. He's recently managed to make some significant improvements to memory utilization and thereby enhance performance. As far as matching up the audio between game versions, he's nearly complete with the basic shipboard audio and will soon be moving to inflight communications. Real life plans have slowed things somewhat, which is something that everyone involved with fan projects should be very familiar with. Nevertheless, fans like Destro continue to persevere and make gradual progress towards amazing things!

I have been picking at it on my free time, which unfortunately has been not much lately. I have fixed many issues including memory leaks and lowered the memory usage from over 5gb to a under a few hundred mb which is more in line with what it should be. I managed this in a few ways but most notably instead of loading

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The Cosmic Circus has covered Wing Commander in their latest retro review. Wing Commander games from the late '90s aren't "pixel art" and I still think the year 2000 sounds kind of futuristic, so it's almost jarring to find that Wing Commander falls into the retro category these days. At any rate, this article does a good job of emphasizing the fun parts of the film while also spending some time analyzing the character elements that didn't work as well. The author has a history with the rest of the franchise, which helps give some valuable context that other recent reviews might lack. Check out the full piece here!

• Even in the year 2700, there’s product placement. Nokia makes the brand of computers that humans use in their ships. If you remember the Nokia brick phones of that era, this makes total sense.
• If you’re a fan of Star: Trek Voyager, you might do a double-take at Maniac. He could be Tom

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PC Gamer has posted a new article about the coolest cockpits in gaming. There's a lot of new stuff in there, as you might expect, with some of the slickest UIs from Star Wars Squadrons, Titanfall 2 and Rebel Galaxy Outlaw throughout the piece. There is precisely one retro throwback though: the Hornet from Wing Commander 1. It's hard to argue it's not among the most iconic cockpits in gaming history, but it still doesn't show up in that many modern articles. The author chose a 16-color Amiga screenshot for the piece, which is an interesting decision, but they all look good. Wing Commander just has so many great choices. You can find the full article here.

F-36 Hornet (Wing Commander)

One of the all-time classic cockpits. Seeing your legs tucked under the console, and your hand wrestling with the flight stick as you fly and fight, gives you a real sense of being squeezed into the pilot's seat of a

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Dennis Mull is back with another wonderful Wing Commander find. The latest addition to his collection is the Special Edition of Wing Commander Prophecy. While these are fairly uncommon in English, it's even more rare to see a German one floating around. The main differences are the Cobalt 60 soundtrack as well as the awesome Wasp mouse pad. This is a nice pickup!

Mail Day: #WingCommander Prophecy Special Edition (German Release) complete with Mousepad and Soundtrack CD

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots Federation ALERT*
The Kumo Crew syndicate has procured enough materials to introduce a new product to the market.
The drug originated with the Blue Viper Club, a piratical travelling community whose dredger is currently in the vicinity of Kumo City station.
It was confirmed that enough shipments of agronomic treatment, liquid oxygen and performance enhancers were received to enable immediate mass production. Pilots also fought to protect haulage vessels from pirate ships, suspected to be Kumo Crew rivals.
The Interstellar Health Organisation has obtained a product sample and confirmed that, despite the name 'helix', it is a new variant of the recreational drug onionhead. As such, the product will be legally classified as onionhead gamma strain when it appears on the market.
Despite claims of medicinal and psychological benefits, it is likely to be illegal in most systems. President

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots Federation ALERT*
Rival candidates have requested deliveries of data to help secure their bids to lead the Marlinist Consulate.
The Marlinist Colonies are voting for who will be elected as their prime consul. This influential role will diplomatically represent all Marlinists and make broad decisions on their behalf.
The first candidate is Verity Dexter from the Marlinism Reformation Party, which is acting as the NMLA political wing. She has the support of Senator Lorcan Scordato to be made an Imperial patron:
"I am in a unique position to finally provide our people with a voice in the Imperial Senate, and to speak for Neo-Marlinists. As prime consul, I will negotiate a permanent peace with the NMLA."
The second candidate, Kayode Tau of the Free Marlinist Movement, is focused on sustaining the Marlinist Colonies:
"Neo-Marlinism and terrorism have no place within our republican ideals.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a nice spread from the December 1996 issue of the French gaming magazine Joystick. We start with a wonderful cover shot of the Heretic fighter, which is great to see since Privateer 2 was also competing with C&C Red Alert for top billing this month. There's a full five pages of preview material, and although I don't read French, it's just fun to see the layout. The Darkening is full of wonderful FMV set pieces and a unique combat engine, so this is full of eye candy. You can find the full issue at archive.org here.