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The WCRespace team has an exciting new feature to show off: volumetric nebulae for WC4 Remastered! In other words, the pink screen filter of decades past has been replaced by swirling fog that slowly reveals objects out in the distance as you approach. There have also been enhancements to the backgrounds so that starfields in the distance also match this environmental art. Check out the full article on what's new here.

A nebula was just a palette switch in ’96, even by ’99 Freespace 2 had made WC4’s nebulae look incredibly dated.

As always we aren’t polishing before moving on so that we can get the complete game up and running ASAP, but we thought you might like a glimpse at the volumetric fog in its current state. I think it’s already a huge improvement, and the simplicity of the effect doesn’t feel out of place as a replacement for the old palette change.

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There's a big new update on the progress of WC4 Remastered! The WCRespace team is now well into building out the Masa System with the new ships and gameplay mechanics that the game introduces there. They've got shuttle docking working and DefianceIndustries has introduced his very impressive Tallahassee cruiser. Plus there's additional discussion on targets to get a closed beta going by the end of the year and a tentative initial release next year.

While it’s still possible we’ll hit the February 12, 2026 target, we’re preparing for a slight delay to ensure we have enough time to polish the visuals. So we may be following in the original’s footsteps and delay the release to hit the 30th anniversary year, though possibly not the exact day.

We plan to have a closed beta by sometime close to the 30th anniversary of the original advertised release date (December 8th this year). The feedback from that

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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 previous posts collected here.

Today's polaroid led us to several interesting stories. Pictured here as "Confed Cap #3" is actor Charles "Chip" Esten. Since appearing as a featured extra in Wing Commander IV, Esten has gone on to a considerable amount of success including appearing as a series regular on ABC drama Nashville, playing Josh Porter on The Office and on multiple iterations of Whose Line Is It Anyway?. Mr. Esten is very active today and even retweeted our request to help identify his polaroid!

The polaroid gives you a good look at a Terran Confederation Navy jacket complete with a name and rank that aren't visible on screen (JARVIS and Lieutenant Commander, respectively). Wing Commander Prophecy would later establish a different canonical rank for Lieutenant Commander (three

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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.

You knew he was coming! Today's Polaroid is Border Worlds Pilot #2, Lester Barrie. Like Moose and Bob-O-Matte, Hacker appears briefly in the Peleus jammer introduction where his Banshee is shot down by a group of Excaliburs. His continuity Polaroid gives us a great look at a grey Border Worlds flight suit and a bit of a cheat the production used frequently: since Hacker was only ever seen from the shoulders up he doesn't have a full flight suit... just the top!

Mr. Barrie's story is a little different from many of the actors we've previously identified: while he had several guest spots in TV and small film roles in the 1990s, he gave up acting in favor of two other passions: standup comedy and preaching! Today he is Reverend Barrie, assistant pastor at the

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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.

Last Thanksgiving, we wrote about a Polaroid of Moose and how the character represented three different people at once: the actor who played him in a cutscene, the member of the development team whose name and photograph were used for his wingman selection screen and finally the member of the Playstation team whose name replaced them in that port. Now, we've found a polaroid that represents FOUR different people! Meet Miner.

Unraveling the Polaroid meant once again dealing with a small problem: Miner is in full Confederation fighter pilot costume (next to the nose of the famous Confederation shuttle set!) and so his face isn't very visible. Luckily, the "Mike" and "Confed Pilot" scribbled at the bottom were enough to move the needle: the game's printed credits do

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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.

Our Polaroid research continues to produce surprising stories: this time, we've found a justified star. Or at least... the star of Justified! While the label on the photograph reads "BW Pilot Garret 'Moose'", the actor in question is none other than Walton Goggins (credited as Walt Goggins). Moose appears in the Peleus jamming scene, one of the three Border Worlds Banshee pilots that are ambushed and shot down by a flight of Excaliburs. The Polaroid gives us a great look at a Border Worlds flight suit, which the production dyed grey from the original tan Confederation suits with some minor alterations (like the Union of Border Worlds patch on his left shoulder).

Credited as Border Worlds Pilot #3, Mr. Goggins would quickly go from nearly faceless tertiary