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Lady Astrid Minerva-Duval, wife of Hadrian Augustus Duval, has confirmed that she is expecting a child in December.
The story was broken by the Paresa News Network:
"Lady Astrid was visibly overjoyed as she told us of her pregnancy, and of Hadrian's excitement at being a father. Her only complaint was that she's no longer allowed to fly support missions for Nova Imperium. Once a Commander, always a Commander!"
Mainstream media channels also commented on the news.
The Imperial Herald: "This has caused tangible ripples of unease in the Senate. Since neither Emperor Arissa Lavigny-Duval nor Princess Aisling Duval have heirs, Hadrian's claim to the throne will be strengthened if he alone ensures that the Duval bloodline continues."
Eye on Achenar: "Who cares about the spawn of Emperor Hengist's illegitimate grandson? The NMLA may have assassinated much of the Imperial Family, but this outcast boy

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Imperial senators supporting the isolationist group Nova Imperium have demanded that Emperor Arissa Lavigny-Duval acknowledge its figurehead, Hadrian Augustus Duval.

Senator Eloise Winterstone proclaimed to the Senate:

"The Imperial family must officially recognise Hadrian Duval as one of its own. Given that the Emperor has no children, such an act would secure the future of the Duval bloodline."

Chancellor Anders Blaine replied:

"Our official position is that Nova Imperium is a fringe organisation with no right to determine policy. We have no more to say on the matter."

Political journalist Cassia Carvalho wrote in The Imperial Herald:

"With the possibility of civil war increasing, the suggestion that Arissa accept Hengist Duval's grandson as an heir feels like a reasonable compromise. Her lack of response so far has led to accusations of weakness, with many calling on her to step down and

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Princess Aisling Duval has discussed her forthcoming marriage in an exclusive interview with entertainment journalist Solomon Helios.

The princess spoke openly about many topics, including the impact of her announcement:

"I was as surprised as everyone else! After the ball for the Federal delegation, things moved very quickly. Perhaps I should have been more patient, but I wanted people to know my intentions as soon as possible."

On her relationship with Federal Ambassador Jordan Rochester, she said:

"I had met Jordan a few times at diplomatic events, and we always got on well. He's much warmer and funnier than one would expect an ambassador to be. I don't know how I managed without him for so long."

She also tackled criticism from Senator Zemina Torval, among others:

"Any negativity around this wedding is based on prejudice and fear. Shouldn't we all be free to love whomever we wish? Maybe if

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Sol Today hosted an interview with the multi-billionaire Zachary Rackham, who is rumoured to be moving into politics.
From his villa at Lake Rackham, overlooking Homeland's famous Singing Geysers, the entrepreneur spoke at length on various topics.
On the rise of his business empire:
"The hard-working folk at Rackham Capital Investments have done me proud in recent years. We're currently holding financial talks to acquire a major starport company, so watch this space!"
On his role with the Beta Hydri Corporation:
"It's a privilege to support my people in Beta Hydri, by helping to run their government. Things are already running smoother after I streamlined a few departments."
On suggestions that he will take part in the Federal presidential election:
"I'm deeply flattered by calls to stand as an independent candidate. But really, an ordinary guy like me as president? I suppose it indicates

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Francesca Wolfe of the Wallglass Investigations Agency provides an inside view of the Jokers' Deck gambling circle.
"Gunnarson's intel was correct. The latest host is multi-billionaire investor Lexi October, the lady who rescued Supratech from bankruptcy. We're in one of October Consortium's disused warehouse complexes, which looks derelict on the outside but is a fabulous glittering palace within. I don't actually know what planet I'm on, since all the servants – including me with my fake ID – were transported here in total secrecy."
"Jokers' Deck is exactly what you'd expect of a luxury casino for the super-rich. Exquisite food, sumptuous clothes, and dozens of games from deadlock poker to Giant Verrix racing. Wagers are made using billion-credit chips, precious gemstones and even land deeds to an entire continent. And that's not counting the VIP rooms that I can't get into."
"I've served

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

I've been looking at the movie cockpit instruments lately because it seems they filmed the insert shots of things like stick handling at least twice. They did an initial shoot on set, then filmed a bunch of Rapier stuff in August 1998 and then more pickups as late as October which is getting awfully close to their delivery date. Things like the Broadsword instrument panels were reshot at that late date. I was wondering how much you could tell in the final movie if you knew what you were looking for.

Even in the final version, maybe to differentiate Knight's Broadsword from Paladin's, you can see they have different control yokes, but the earlier versions of the Broadsword just looks like maybe original Canberra instruments.

So those might have been intended to be replaced anyway. There's Knight's:

...and Paladin's:

This got me thinking about the Rapier a bit more. The fighter dashboard got a complete

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The Socho system, headquarters of Aegis Core, has been overtaken by a criminal faction. The system is now in a state of anarchy.

A courier carrying a message from Aegis scientist Dr Mia Valencourt managed to escape the system. The message was then broadcast by the Rewired news service:

"This is an urgent call for assistance. Regional security forces have been overrun, and this vicious gang – they call themselves the Socho Gold Raiders – they're in charge now. They've shut everything down. Apparently they're convinced we're building some kind of super-weapon, so that's probably what brought them here."

"They were so clever. We picked up what looked like a Thargoid signal and the security forces went charging in. Everyone was terrified that the Thargoids had come to Socho. But it wasn't the Thargoids – it was a trap. The Raiders were waiting, and they cut those ships to pieces."

"Please, if

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
Wreckage from a past conflict between the Guardian and Thargoid races has been found in the Wregoe BU-Y b2-0 system.
The crashed remains of Thargoid vessels, alongside structures of Guardian origin, are located on Wregoe BU-Y b2-0 1 c. Conflict between the two species occurred millions of years ago, but physical evidence of this is extremely rare. The only comparable site, in the Trapezium Sector YU-X c1-2 system, was initially found two centuries ago by the Azimuth Biochemicals ship Proteus and rediscovered in 3307.
Wregoe BU-Y b2-0 was one of several systems under investigation following a report by Commander Renia Rakowski, who encountered a Thargoid interceptor in nearby Wregoe GA-X B3-0.
The Holloway Bioscience Institute has sent teams into the area to explore the possibility of xenoarchaeological research. Dr Jeong-Hui Shin gave a statement to The Sovereign

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a weird nostalgia trip! This is a video recording of an old computer store circa 1991, and Wing Commander makes a handful of cameos throughout. We post a lot of retro stuff like this, but rarely do we get so much of the peripheral environment. Everything from the neon clothes at 0:22 to the shirt and tie of the salesman at 0:51 screams early '90s. The clerk is standing in front of the game at 2:36 and familiar music permeates throughout, especially in the last minute. It's one thing for players born more recently to boot up their GOG copies and experience the pixelated goodness, but there was also a magic associated with checking out these haunts to learn about what was new. Keep in mind that this was years and years before anyone downloaded a trailer or found a release date on the internet! Thanks to Michael Klamerus for the find!

Last night while doing research for my game I came across

Quote from Crossfire Video

One from officially organized events in Crossfire space (mod version 1.9). Note: slow motion speed vary from 0,5 to 0,8.

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...Wing Commander

Flat Universe

! The votes are in, and WCFU took the top spot in our annual fan project contest for the third time. The newest version of their top-down shooter features new fighters, new explosion & damage effects, new weapons and awesome new multiplayer modes. The

Maslas

Brothers

previously won in 2014 and 2016. They seem to have even numbered years on lock - will they be able to keep it up in 2019?

In second place close behind Flat Universe, we have an actual literal tie this year. The first runner up is the Prophecy & Secret Ops

Model Upgrade Pack

! 2017's winner also had a big year with new ship models, impressive new Open/GL graphical effects and a neat iridescence effect for the Nephilim ships thanks to the unholy machinations of the MUP team: DefianceIndustries, Dark Sentinel, Pedro, PopsiclePete, Whistler and gr1mre4per

The other runner up is a newcomer this year: the WC1

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The votes are in, and another round of project winners has been decided! The Prophecy & Secret Ops Model Upgrade Pack has come out on top as the 2019 Fan Project of the Year! Congratulations! Fans were clearly compelled by the steady stream of status updates that culminated in another impressive beta release. This also marks the first time that a project has placed somewhere in the winner or runner up categories for five consecutive years. It's been a really good run!

Once again we've got two strong runners up that both ranked very closely in the tally. Both projects are relatively young in their development life cycle, but they each represent some tremendous potential. Our first runner up is the WC4 Fan Remake! The project has released a variety of promising teasers that Wingnuts are eager to try out!

The second runner up is Wing Leader! Howard's updated take on the original Wing Commander

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Last year had plenty of low points, but Wing Commander fans persevered throughout the dark times and still managed to do some amazing things. We were able to pick out ten of them for special recognition, and Wingnuts have spent the last several weeks voting on which should take the top honors. It's always slightly painful to deem one or two the winners, since all of the nominees and more do such great things for the community, but it's usually clear that a few bubble up to the top.

This time around, our winner for Fan Project of the Year is AI/Neural Net Enhanced Wing Commander Videos! ODVS managed to successfully create what was one thought impossible, an extremely faithful upscaling of the original games' low res footage into HD quality. By mastering a handful of advanced AI/neural net tools, the process creates detail where none was present to boost the footage. He's completed full passes on

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Votes have been coming in all month, and there's been a clear trend in the results. As January is coming to a close, we're ready to announce the winners! This year the numbers were pretty clear cut. With that being said, every project got a good handful of votes, which shows how there's something for everyone brewing in the community.

The top contender for 2021 was the Wing Commander 4 Fan Remake. While Wingnuts wait for a playable test, the team has provided a steady and informative pace of updates that tell people what they're working on. And these are formatted in short but slick articles with accompanying visuals to help provide a good sense of the state of things.

We have two established runners up this year. The first is ODVS' AI/Neural Net Enhanced Wing Commander Videos. We've seen more and more fans play around with the new WC3 language options lately, and it's been fun to see what may be

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We've been collecting votes for the last several weeks, and the winners of our annual Fan Project of the Year contest have become pretty clear!

It may come as little surprise, but we have a quite definitive first place choice for 2022. With a commanding lead in our polling, the WC4 Remastered project wins as our Fan Project of the Year! Congratulations to the team! If you haven't given it a spin year, you can still try out the playable demo. The project has generated quite a bit of excitement lately, and we can't wait to see what's in store for 2023!

As wonderful as our winner is, we had a whole slate of creative endeavors to choose from. Each one earned votes based on their own merits, and all are deserving of high praise thanks to their efforts to keep the WC community engaged and vibrant for another year. Two options bubbled up to the top and rank as our co-runners up this year.

The first is

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

As January is already coming to a close, we're happy to announce the winners to our annual fan project of the year event! To start things off, we've got two fantastic projects that we are co-awarding Fan Project of the Year this time around.

The first is Wing Loader, which had a tremendous release in 2023 that fully integrated speech from the Sega/Mega CD version of WC1 into the PC version of the game. With the knowledge gained from achieving this milestone, Destro began work on a larger effort to expand compatibility to other games in the series. This includes the future potential to integrate higher quality video into Wing Commander 3, which we hope comes to fruition!

The other fan project of the year winner is WC4 Remastered. They released a new iteration of the game's playable demo this past year that incorporates a variety of fixes, better joystick support and new in-flight comms.. The team

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The Great Wing Commander Movie in Real Time Event has begun! The @WCCIC Twitter account is now tweeting the events of the film in real time as they happened across March 15, 16 and 17 in the year 2654. As we mentioned yesterday, this is much more than little snippets posted to social media. Many tweets are accompanied with a link that has script notes, video samples, storyboards and more that go along with that point in the film. A few examples are below. Follow the full event as it unfolds live here.

Day 1 - 0900 Zulu - BREAKING NEWS FROM THE VEGA SECTOR: a fleet of forty Kilrathi capital ships have launched a surprise attack on Pegasus Naval Station in the Dakota System! MORE

Kilrathi marines have boarded Pegasus and made their way to the bridge in an apparent attempt to capture the NAVCOM AI! Admiral Wilson and crew are presumed dead.

Day 1 - 2100 Zulu - TCS Concordia, flagship of the 14th Fleet

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Arne from

Android Arts

has been bitten by the Wing Commander bug lately and the result has been a wide ranging gallery of WC sketches. He put together some interesting

mockups

about a year ago that focused heavily on the WC1/2 timeframe, and now his new work spans virtually the entire series. This time he's got aliens in addition to ships, and this lineup includes Confed soldiers, Kilrathi, Firekkans, Steltek and even the Mopoks! His fighter sketches also have grown to include works from

both

Privateers, and there's a Tri-System Melissa Banks-inspired outfit! The Tarsus first person cockpit also makes an appearance. These are super fun, and I'm anxious to see what else he makes in the future. You can read more about his specific inspiration

here

and follow the creative process on

Twitter

.

I have some fond memories playing Wing Commander 1 on the Amiga. A sticker on my box says it works on the

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Here's a spectacular experiment conducted by DefianceIndustries. Goliath and UnnammedCharacter made some great headway a couple years ago on adding enhanced models into the original WC1 engine, and Defiance has taken that in a different direction. He's taken his animated series-style Tiger's Claw and converted it into a collection of sprites to be displayed in game. The result is that players are now able to fly around a Bengal straight out of the Academy television show. What a trip! Let Defiance know if you'd like to test this out or if there would be interest in a conversion pack with more ships.

So I was playing around with the WCt Toolbox and decided to try and make a WC1 mod. So I took my WCA Bengal and converted it into a sprite sheet. It was a larger process than I originally thought but it is kinda fun to do this sort of messing around. Admittedly I stand on the shoulders of giants here.

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Bazooka Joe

has published an interesting Wing Commander themed music video. It's three minutes of fighter scenes stitched together from Wing Commander Academy to the tune of "Know Why." Wing Commander fan videos like this were common a while back, but they've fallen out of vogue in recent years. It's not really clear what the theme or motivation for this clip was, but it's more than just the intro paired to random music. Someone spent some time editing together all the combat, so here it is for your viewing pleasure:

Wing Commander Know why music video