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This is part of a series analyzing newly discovered Wing Commander IV continuity photographs. You can find the previous posts collected here.

We're stepping away from flight suits for today's Wing Commander IV Polaroid post. What we have here is something intriguing: a young woman in a non-standard uniform with a nametag that reads "LOATS". The picture is labeled only "Com. Specialist" and features no visible insignia patches, making this one an interesting challenge... or not, because despite two typos the start to our seach is right in the manual connected right to the text under the photo: "Circle V Comm. Specialist - Saxon Trainer". The 'Circle V' must actually be 'Circe V', an embattled planet you (optionally) visit midway through the game and a short Google search revealed that "Saxon Trainer" is really Saxon TRAINOR.

Who, then, is LOATS? If you tend to side with Panther over Hawk then you may

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This is part of a series analyzing newly discovered Wing Commander IV continuity photographs. You can find the first post in the series' introduction here.

Our next continuity polaroid is a familiar face: it's Bob-O-Matte! Eagle-eyed Wing Commander players will recall that Bob-O-Matte is one of the three Border Worlds pilots who is ambushed and destroyed in the cutscene that opens the Peleus 'jammer' series of missions. Despite his apparent death at the hands of a Confederation Excalibur, Bob-O-Matte appears again in Wing Commander Prophecy reading a tarot deck in one of the game's most unusual transitions. Bob-O-Matte's flying scene takes place in the game's Banshee cockpit set which is a simple triangular backdrop (shots of the instrumentation are reused from the more elaborate Lance cockpit set). As you can see in the photograph, only the top portion of the flight suit was necessary since the shot

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We have purchased a little bit of Wing Commander history and are passing the information on to you! Artifacts from the Origin Museum are currently being auctioned on eBay which has the excellent effect of revealing some interesting Wing Commander material we did not know survived! In this case, a set of twenty seven polaroids from Wing Commander IV's Second Unit shoot which are full of fascinating behind the screens and lore information, including some better-than-ever looks at some of the game's different costumes and never-before-recorded identities of various background characters! We're studying each polaroid and collecting what we can about how it relates to the game and will be updating one at a time. Wing Commander IV's Second Unit shoot took care of things like shipboard transitions and comm videos. In the case of the latter, actors were typically filmed in front of a single small backdrop

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WC modder

Pedro

- of

Unknown Enemy

and WCP

OpenGL

fame - has released an image that shows off some of the ships for his WC4 remaster project. The

effort

has been

hinted

at for some time, but as more high quality assets are completed by DefianceIndustries, the project as a whole becomes more feasible. After some extensive planning, Pedro is ready to soon get started on the programming side. He's using the

Usagi

engine due to its modularity and ability to recreate the feel of the game. Despite their popularity, WC3/4 have historically had fewer directly associated fan projects than Prophecy/Secret Ops. It's great to see the whole

breadth

of the series getting attention these days!

Defiance has been passing me models for the WCIV remake. Not too much to report, I spent most of my time getting the engine ready for a new project but it's about time to start.

I was hoping to more closely match the lighting

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The WC4 Fan Remake team has a new update that touches on a variety of subjects. To start with, they've announced that the release of their playable demo will likely slide from this summer out to a later date in 2021. There are a few changes coming for it, but overall the main message is that lots of good progress is being made. To drive the point home about how complex this can be, however, the new article also has a detailed discussion about programming math that gives you a glimpse at the effort involved here. They could still use help in the 3D art and programming realms, so contact Pedro and the gang if that sounds like a role for you! Read the entire update at WCRespace here.

In order to minimize the delay one change we’re looking at is replacing the Intrepid model from the demo with the Lexington, which is already complete. The choice to use the Intrepid was always odd anyway as the gameflow

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The WC4 Fan Remake team has posted a bit of a roadmap that lays out their next steps to make progress towards something playable. The target for next year will be to release an enhanced version of the actual WC4 demo that originally came out in 1996. It's a big leap from exciting teaser trailer to something interactive, so they've got their work cut out for them in the months ahead! You can learn more about the project at WCRespace.

Originally we had planned to do a first playable using mission 1 of the game, however LOAF of the CIC gave us a much better idea; to recreate the often overlooked original Wing Commander IV demo. Most of us had never played the demo, but we were pretty excited for a number of reasons. ...

The switch to producing a public release is not one to be taken lightly; a video can hide a multitude of incomplete features, the same can not be said of a demo. We’ve already made a

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Pedro has released a handful of exciting comparison shots for the WC4 Fan Remake. The first pair of images features a scene first without and then with the new Adaptive Screen Space Ambient Occlusion technique. With the effect incorporated, you can see more nuanced shadows and lighting. I've blown up all the thumbnails in this post so you can easily see the differences, but you'll probably want to click into them full the full effect.

All has been quiet on the WCIV remake front. That doesn't mean we haven't been hard at work, just that it hasn't been very visual work.

Still with the CIC birthday coming up again we've taken some time out over the last month or so to correct that.Here's a peak at one of the new features, adaptive screen spaced ambient occlusion. Although a very subtle effect it adds a lot of definition to the models.

As most models are static a lot of this could be baked in to the

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The WC4 Fan Remake team has been outwardly quiet these last couple months, but they've been very busy! This was revealed today in one of their biggest updates yet. The TCS Lexington has been massively overhauled with incredible new geometry, textures, detail and especially lighting, which is a new dimension for the team to play with. Things like capship turrets are now exquisitely modeled with accurate physicality and are fully destructible. The flight deck is also starting to come to life with plenty of environmental object filler. And there's even a flythrough video! As an extra cherry on top, variants of the recently revealed frigate model have also been shown off. Check out the full update at WCRespace.com here.

People may think that the lighting doesn’t match what was in the FMV; however this isn’t quite the case. We captured a number of scenes from the Lexington hangar and what we

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As the WC4 Fan Remake continues down the path towards being a functional game, there are lots of secondary elements that need careful consideration. Autopilot isn't something Wing Commander fans spend a lot of time thinking about, but it's critical in WC3/4 due to the spaces between nav points. The exterior autopilot camera is also handled differently than other perspective angles, so Pedro had to create a special camera configuration so that these sequences felt right. ODVS put together an awesome video to show all this in action! You can read more about the process at WCRespace here.

There was just one problem: all the action takes place at the second navpoint and we have to get there first! Unfortunately in Wing Commander IV the decision was taken to make space vast. Flying between waypoints manually isn’t the practical option that it was in WC1-2. There was no way around it; we had to

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WCRespace has another nifty article on an interesting aspect of development. It talks about how cockpits will be implemented in the WC4 Fan Remake. While the game will offer an authentic experience that mimics the original game's full HUD interface, they are also modeling awesome cockpit setups. The various displays and readouts will be embedded appropriately, which will give people a compelling reason to stick with this more artistic and immersive mode. Check out the article here to find more detail on what the team's got in work.

The goal is to try and make each ship feel unique and to offer the player a different experience with each ship they fly.

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It's not every day that fans open a new Wing Commander website, so we're very excited today to unveil the new site for the fan remake WC4 Remastered! Pedro and DefianceIndustries have been doing the ground work to get the game's engine and core assets together for a while now, and efforts have recently been kicked into higher gear with the addition of ODVS' talents on video enhancement and 2D art. Now everything they've been working on has been collected in one central hub. The site is nicely appointed with subsections for background info, project status, media and more. They also have an elaborate links page, which is a wonderful throwback to old webpage days. Everything even works well on mobile devices. Visit for yourself at WCRespace.com!

I'm proud and excited to release WCRespace.com to the web! This is the official website for the Wing Commander IV Fan Remake project. Pedro, Defiance and I

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ODVS has put together a new promo for the WC4 Fan Remake, and it's a little different than most that we've seen. Watch it and let him know what you think. The team is also potentially looking for another programmer. If this might be something you could help with, hit the comment link below!

Are there any C++ / C# programmers out there left to recruit? We have two musicians but only one programmer. It's our only real bottle neck.

We're looking for tools. Now whilst many of the tools are in C# like all game engines the core is in C++ interop is going to be needed even for those.

I'll outline some tasks I think we could bounce to others here:

• AI Behaviour Tree - New behaviours for space combat (Tool C#, game behaviours protocol buffers, behaviour implementations C++)
• Model material editor: Leaning towards C++ using IMGUI to avoid complexity. C# is an option but would require a lot of interopThe AI tool

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We posted an exciting trailer this past weekend that gave everyone a solid update on all of the progress being made for the WC4 Fan Remake. The team has also published a new article on classic assets and how they differ from the fancy new models. The original models and textures are used as an index to ensure the new content is spot on. There will even be an easy switch in the game that allows players to swap between the old and new graphics. Read up on what they're doing at WCRespace here.

One of our primary aims with this remaster is to create a version of the gameplay which matches the FMV as closely as possible. This means creating new models based on the FMV. That said it is fairly standard practice for these kinds of projects to offer a classic mode where you can play the game unaltered.

Likewise when the remaster is eventually released you will be able to switch between Defiance Industries'

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The war toils on for the crew making the WC4 Fan Remake. With a playable demo still in the works, the team has firmed up a potential set of minimum specs to get everything running smoothly. I haven't kept up with modern PC specs, but these seem quite reasonable for the level of graphical fidelity and performance we've seen from previews. With that being said, now is your chance to voice any concern if something else should be supported.

With the help of EmuMusicFan I believe we now have some minimum specs.He helped test with low GPU memory and movie playback optimizations to get 60fps 1080p h265 running at speed with only 2 cores.

Minimum specs: (No shadows, no post process)
2 Core CPU
2GB GPU (Probably 860M/750Ti)
8GB Memory

Recommended specs:
4 Core CPU
6GB GPU (Something like a 980Ti)
8GB Memory

Ideal specs:
4 Core CPU
8GB GPU (Something like a 1070Ti)
16GB Memory

If these specs seem too high for anyone give

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The WC4 Fan Remake team has a new update to share regarding shields. Wing Commander 4's game engine didn't visually depict shields for capships: it's one of those things your brain either glosses over or subconsciously imagines was there all along. We got some gorgeous effects during cutscenes, but you don't experience them in flight. After 26 years, that's finally being rectified with a fancy animated texture technique. The thumbnail below expands into an animated gif so you can see the sparkly results in action! You can also read about the whole process in a new article at WCRespace.com.

We’ve tried to create something similar, but not identical. The FMV has flat, circular ripples which can be carefully placed. We have no control over where the player fires and, if the player fired into a corner, it would clip into the geometry or extend past it (as seen in WCP). Instead we project an animated

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Darkmage DMJC has some great news for WC4 fans on Linux. After years of steady progress, he reports that the latest build of Wine successfully runs GOG's DVD version of the game. There's a particular checkbox in the winecfg file that you need to make sure is unmarked, but after that, it should be fairly smooth sailing. As with anything like this, there's always the potential for unique hardware/software configurations to produce new hiccups, so hit up the CIC Forums or Discord if you encounter issues!

Wing Commander IV DVD edition works on Linux! Set this in winecfg. If that box is ticked it fails. Also run regsvr32 Mpeg2DecFilter.ax and regsvr32 ac3filter.ax to make sure the codecs are installed.

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Pix

has expanded his Wing Commander archive with a scan of the relatively rare

Wing Commander III: The Ultimate Strategy Guide

. It's decidedly the fourth best guide book for WC3 after

Origin's Official Guide

,

The Authorized Combat Guide to WC3

and the

Japanese Guide to WC3 on Playstation

. But while the other two English books are included freebies with the game on

GOG

, the Ultimate Strategy Guide is lesser known and harder to find. It's certainly a very interesting artifact in its own way. Hopefully more fans can

check it out now

!

I recently realised I'd missed it out so if the other 3 guides weren't enough for you, there is now a scan of the Wing Commander 3 Ultimate Strategy Guide in the disorganised list that I call a downloads page.

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Swizzley has posted a vintage video review for Wing Commander 3. This might not sound like a big deal, but in February 1995 this would have been on the bleeding edge of multimedia technology. A full ten years before YouTube first came online, something like this was a very rare treat. Video downloads were painful on dialup, so these were distributed on disc with Interactive Entertainment Magazine. They were one of the first to include CD-ROMs with material like this, so we got some really cool features such as this video review of WC4, an early '90s Richard Garriott interview and neat Privateer 2 / WC4 high tech previews. Today we're used to carefully timed embargoes lifting days before a global launch, but this would have represented a lightning fast turnaround at the time (recorded in December to hit newstands in January). The humor doesn't always age well, but it's still a fascinating time

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Cloud_Man has created a neat Wing Commander 3 tribute trailer. He's put in quite a bit of work to edit the clips in such a way as to create a slick mini narrative. It's great to see people still experimenting with these elements and having fun like this more than twenty-five years later. Check it out below!

Wing Commander 3 - Heart of The Tiger (1994) - Tribute Trailer. Squadron 42 is currently my most anticipated video game. The said game is planned to enter beta stage later this year, and probably scheduled for full release sometime next year. In its anticipation, I decided to go through previous games made by the same team. Wing Commander 3 is easily my most favorite of em all. Played the whole game again and recorded footage to create little tribute trailer that covers some aspects of the story. For full experience of this timeless classic and emotional roller coaster ride, find the game on

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AD found this one on a new YouTube channel, 3DO World. It's a trailer for the 3DO version of Wing Commander from an in-store video sampler tape. Like the full version of WC3 on this console, the video quality depicted here is pretty good with minimal artifacting and solid colors. The trailer is fairly short overall, and you only get a quick shot of the gameplay at the end. Although the engine might look low res like the Playstation port, a handful of missions and features have been jazzed up in a very compelling way. It's definitely worth giving this one a try if you get an opportunity! You can find our collection of different WC3 trailers in CIC Holovids!

This is a trailer of the 3DO game, Wing Commander 3. This appeared on a VHS tape titled "3DO Video Sampler 5" that was distrusted with retailers circa 1996 in the US.