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*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
Crazed pilots that were killing civilians in the Shamash system have been eliminated.
The local security force vessels participating in Fleet Exercise Grey Swan were exposed to an anomalous signal, which then circulated through the fleet's networked comms. This apparently triggered a violent mania that caused them to attack passing traffic.
Captain Ulrich Maurer of the megaship Khonsu Gleam announced that an operation to eliminate the threat had concluded:
"All Grey Swan ships have now been targeted and destroyed. Though tragic, this action undoubtedly saved many thousands of lives and has brought peace to the system once more. San Tu State Network, in agreement with Shamash Future, has agreed to reimburse all independent pilots who took part. Payments are available for collection at the Khonsu Gleam."
Shamash Future confirmed that Garrett Orbital, which was locked

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BOO! From us to you!

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Here's a neat article on the making of The Darkening from a 1996 DK book on multimedia!

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People who have been rescued from Thargoid Titans remain in quarantine, but can soon expect family visits and access to comms networks.
Aegis reported that bio-storage capsules are still being successfully extracted from the Thargoid motherships, albeit at high risk to pilots. Each revived individual has been placed in medical isolation, as per guidance from Aegis specialists.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Corcoran, who coordinates the Alliance's involvement with Aegis, discussed the situation in a session of the Assembly:
"All abductees are being monitored for signs of Thargoid physical or mental influence. So far, I'm pleased to say, these test results remain negative. Therefore, those from Allied systems are now permitted to receive visitors, while remaining under strict quarantine conditions. They are also being granted direct access to comms and public media. I understand that Federal,

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Little discovery: the firefighting truck seen fleetingly in the Wing Commander movie is a rented Saracen tank. Now I have an excuse to own a tank.

More of the truck from AD!

AD: Don't forget to ask for the spray foam kit when you order yours! Off-camera, this vehicle is shoring up the breached bulkhead. It was shot at least twice with multi-cam setups to only show us the tires.

And its cousin, the fuel truck:

AD: I think this also settles that they used the same truck as the fuel truck in the movie, but dressed it differently with extra panels, wheel covers, and more tanks. You can spot it very briefly and a handful of flight deck scenes. You get a decent look at the back of it in an unused angle of Maniac's reckless landing, which apparently almost crashed into the fuel truck.

Concept art from the movie's set folks! You can see it's supposed to be an unmanned repair truck that sprays self-sealing goo

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Today we have a truly incredible find! VGDensetsu shared this piece of art by Greg Winters. It's the source sketch for what eventually became the phenomenal box art for Wing Commander: The Secret Missions on the Super Nintendo. We absolutely love finding stuff like this under any circumstances, but there are some extra quirky elements here. One, it reveals that the first cut of the drawing depicts a more typical brown Salthi. In the final piece, the ship is tinted green, which is an excellent nod to the fact that the SNES version of the game replaces its Jalthi art with a green Salthi model. That's such a cool info bit. And two, this sketch is on the opposite side of a piece of paper with the SNES Wizard of Oz game. Wild! The original piece is up for auction throughout this month.

Greg Winters The Wizard of Oz & Wing Commander: The Secret Missions SNES Original Preliminary Box Art (Seta,

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THRILLING ART NEWS! It turns out that the amazing cover to Wing Commander: End Run was NOT painted by Paul Alexander (as credited)... but David Mattingly! And... HE SELLS PRINTS AT HIS WEBSITE! Cool kids will know David Mattingly for his Animorphs covers while extremely hip gentlemen will know him for his Honor Harrington ones.

End Run credits its cover art to Paul Anderson - the same as Freedom Flight, Fleet Action and Action Stations (which was commissioned for the WC3 novel). Those other three look like Paul Anderson paintings, though, and End Run kind of sticks out in its style. The painting was certainly sold years ago as a Paul Anderson original, but now that we have this super high res photography:

His wizard art is also worthy of song:

I don't know if there's a story behind the incorrect credit... but it's worth remembering that this is the same series that also credited a whole book to the

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

President Zachary Hudson has announced a raft of legislation he intends to push during his last few months in office.
Political journalists have noted that many of the points would benefit the Republican Party while in opposition to the president-elect Felicia Winters administration. A press release from the Office of the Federal President listed the key initiatives currently underway:
"First: A new media standards agency will be established to regulate independently operated newsfeeds in Federal systems, to ensure local issues are presented in a format which adheres to Federal values."
"Second: Corporations that have exclusive contracts with the Federal government will be granted significant tax rebates, on President Hudson's executive authority."
"Third: The Federal Navy Intelligence Office will establish a data-sharing strategy with the Proactive Detection Bureau. This will broaden the net

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The phenomenal expansion of the CIC Holovid video archive continues! Having recently vastly expanded what was available for Privateer 2, LOAF and AD have moved on to Wing Commander Prophecy. Their complete catalog of the game's cutscenes includes every clip in high quality, complete with transcripts, storyboards, alternate languages, variations and branching choices depicted. The game's ICIS mission briefings have also been digitized and transcribed, and THOUSANDS of in-flight audio communication clips have been added. This even applies to the 3Dfx Test and playable demo. Plus, a fun variety of behind-the-scenes and bonus videos are available as well. You don't want to miss it!

Here's LOAF with more detail:

• A page for every cutscene in Wing Commander Prophecy! Each page embeds the cutscene in question and collects all sorts of bonus materials:
  • The alternate, higher quality DVD footage
    • The German dub

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A profile of Digital Anvil's swanky downtown office from... ugh... the March 2000 issue of PC Accelerator. Complete with full sized Kilrathi!

...ngl this double-page StarLancer ad is also fire.

You can see pics from our own March 1999 visit to the office here!

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Chronocidal Guy's new Excalibur 3D print has come together nicely. We got a good status update on the component pieces last month, and now we can see how nearly everything has come together. Here he's put together a lengthy rundown of the latest updates. If you'd like a copy of his printing files to test build your own, let him know!

Progress update, all the parts are printed, and I think at least the digital part of the model is something I can call "done" after about 20 years.

The big upgrades for this were mainly the larger size and the cockpit, but the larger scale made a lot of smaller details possible that wouldn't have shown up on my smaller models if I had tried to print them. I do think the model will be better if using a liquid resin printer, but I'm very happy with how well the ABS turned out.

One of the biggest things I changed were all the greeblie panels. I did my best to estimate how

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Today we've got an exciting update to Wing Loader to share! Destro is back with a major overhaul to the project. As you may recall, Wing Loader is a mod to The Kilrathi Saga to fully add original (Sega CD) speech to the PC version of WC1. As the years have gone by, the scope has expanded to add things like the new Secret Missions from SWC and the bonus SM1 intro from the SNES. A huge upcoming development will be the addition of enhanced WC3 video to a future release. In order to facilitate that update, Destro has significantly streamlined and improved the functional code of the existing material. You can download the latest update here (350 meg zip) and follow the latest at the CIC Forums. You can also find detailed installation instructions here.

Version 0.90 - (Engine Re-Write) Released!

Wing Loader aims to create the most definitive version of Wing Commander possible by supporting the most

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Analysis of objects and refinery compounds obtained from Thargoid spire sites has revealed a crucial connection to the Titans.
The announcement was made by Professor Ishmael Palin, who has been receiving deliveries of these materials from Pilots' Federation members:
"Genetic commonalities between the spire compounds and Titan hull fragments have now been verified. My research suggests these surface sites have been established to harvest resources which sustain the Thargoid motherships in some way. It may be that their supplies of some vital enzymes or fuels are running low, after months of being deployed away from their home worlds."
"To capitalise on this newfound understanding, my team has synthesised a biological contaminant based on the chemical composition of the samples. Introducing this to a spire's processing chain can only help our efforts to disrupt their invasion plans."
Dr Maximo

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Klavs is back with a gift to share with Wing Commander fans this week. He's officially releasing a handful of enhanced 3D models that were put together over the last couple years. The direct art assets were originally available in exchange for a donation towards his family's medical bills, but now they are available at SketchFab for free. Hit the links below for links to each. These designs have made their way into a variety of fan projects over time, and we're excited to see what else fans can do with them!

• Rapier II
• Movie Rapier
• Sabre
• Ferret
• Dralthi
• Hornet

Hi everyone, the Wing Commander redux models are now available for free on Sketchfab. MANY many thanks go out to those who purchased them, your support is so greatly appreciated, and if we ever meet in person I owe you a coffee!

They are a little rough in spots! As with the original models, I was using them as a way to learn substance a little better.

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EmuMusicFan has posted the final page of chapter one in his boldy artistic take on Wing Commander Freedom Flight. Emu's got quite a knack for conveying emotion in his Kilrathi sketches, which is really visually pleasing to see. The emphasis here is primarily on the interrogation of Hobbes. There are nearly 20 pages all told and it took almost exactly one year to draw everything out. We applaud the diligent pace and commitment to see this through! For the first time, here is the completed chapter!

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Accelerwraith tipped us off about a wonderful little easter egg segment in the animated show Invincible on Prime Video. He captured the clip below where a bunch of purple people in helmets and suits run down a red corridor. The way it frames both their heads and their feet seems to confirm it's an intentional nod to the classic Wing Commander dash from the briefing room to the flight deck. Here they are side by side so you can appreciate the similarity!

.@banditloaf Someone(s) on the @InvincibleHQ team played Wing Commander. pic.twitter.com/XOFfh3bogZ

— 山ㄩㄥ千 (@Accelerwraith) November 10, 2023

Did you know there are actually several different running sequences in the original Wing Commander? You can get different combinations of crew wearing a flight helmet, cap, long hair and short hair. Pretty neat!

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Folks, I’d like to introduce you to a true mystery that is driving insane. These photos were kindly posted by a game art collector who purchased them from artist Greg Winters.

The first is the (wonderful!) cover to Mindscape’s SNES Secret Missions port. The second was said to be for an insert… but it was not something found in the final product. So what the heck is it and what was it for?!

Is it even from Wing Commander? At first glance it is certainly at least referencing a bunch of WC visuals that would be appropriate for Secret Missions SNES. For instance, these readouts are straight from the Hornet cockpit:

And the armor gauge is straight from the Raptor art!

That’s absolutely a Wing Commander pilot comm on the left.

And while it’s not a proper WC layout it IS designed around a central Patriarchal radar display, something specific to WC.

So maybe it’s an insert created for the game but dropped? A

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

President-elect Felicia Winters has vowed to defeat new legislation proposed by outgoing President Zachary Hudson.
If funded, these initiatives will establish a media standards regulator, set up a political think tank, and merge the Proactive Detection Bureau into the Federal Navy Intelligence Office. Tax rebates will also be granted to all corporations with existing government contracts.
The Federal Times approached Felicia Winters for comment:
"It's obvious that these pro-Republican measures are being pushed through because of Jerome Archer's poor electoral performance. It would look bad for Hudson to admit that his own vice president wasn't a popular choice of successor. So now he's giving Archer as many advantages as possible for when he becomes shadow president."
"We aim to block these legislative changes should they go through Congress. And I personally guarantee that once I am in

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Lars Ivar Igesund tipped us off about a neat feature shown at NDC Oslo. It includes a brief segment on how Wing Commander leveraged its audio design in the "A Brief History of Computer Music" panel. It's an interesting topic overall, and Wing Commander fits right in! Jump to 29:38 below if you'd like to skip straight to the WC chapter.

Computer programmed music has come a long way since the CSIR Mark 1 played a scratchy Colonel Bogie back in the early 1950s.In this talk we'll go on a journey through the history of music made with code. We'll meet the pioneers who invented computer music, visit classic video game soundtracks, learn how computer musicians made big sounds with tiny tech, how algorithms create never-ending soundtracks and the huge impact computer music has had on popular culture. Expect lots of nostalgia, vintage code on vintage computers and a musical experience of epic proportions.

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

People who were recovered from the Thargoids have been flagged as potential biohazards by an Imperial medical institute.
Dr Zoe Terentia , chief researcher at Kamadhenu Medipure , published her findings in the Citizens Chronicle.
"Our analysis of abducted Imperial citizens currently in isolation has yielded disturbing results. There is clear evidence of an auto-immune response in multiple subjects. These manifest as minor physiological changes at a superficial level, which are mostly being dismissed."
"In my professional opinion, this qualifies as evidence that these individuals have been altered in some way by the Thargoid-constructed bio-storage capsules. I recommend they all be relocated to a high-security location beyond inhabited space. Should further mutations manifest, euthanasia should be considered to prevent any chance of contamination."
Director Ivano Colombera of the Imperial