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CountvonSchnaps has a whole fleet for you! They've continued their wonderful redesigns of classic Wing Commander ships with a trio of designs from the original game, the Scimitar, Hornet and the Tiger's Claw herself! These are so well done... a true artist's work! You can find more of their redesigns here.

CF-105 Scimitar (DeviantArt)

The second redesign of a Wing Commander II fighter; the CF105 Scimitar medium fighter a commission for Shoguneagle

Again great fun to redesign it making it feel, in my opinion, more modern.

The Scimitar medium fighter was manufactured by Origin Aerospace and is a successful design that was in service with various factions during the span of 140 years.

Armed with dual mass drivers and up to 5 missiles the ship packed a powerful punch when used by a capable pilot.

F-36 Hornet (DeviantArt)

A commission for Shoguneagle showcasing the Hornet light fighter. Small and nimble the

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We love discounts on Wing Commander almost as much as we love diving into peculiar minutiae, so GOG has us covered on both fronts this weekend with their Loot Drop Promo. I can think of plenty of games with loot from classics like Diablo to modern looter shooters like Destiny or The Division. I can't quite figure how Wing Commander quite fits into that mould, but the good folks at GOG decided to included Wing Commanders Prophecy, Armada and Academy. Armada Proving Grounds does include in-flight loot pickups you can grab, but that's kind of a deep cut! In any case, grab these three at 59% off by Monday!

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There's great news coming out of the Wing Commander movie club's watch of Star Trek: The Motion Picture: it turns out the human adventure is only beginning! This week, we're going back to World War II for another sort of human adventure: Hell in the Pacific (1968) is less of another epic war story and more of a psychological duel. It has only two characters and very little dialogue; more Enemy Mine than Return of the Jedi! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Hell in the Pacific is included in our series because of a quote from the Wing Commander movie's visual effects supervisor Chris Brown which was included in an August 1998 preview of the film in SFX magazine. Wing Commander certainly has gun-with-engine Rapiers and tracer bullets in space… but it's not totally clear from what I've read that those are specific to Hell in the Pacific. I guess we'll find out!

The classic war movie

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

'Special advisor' Seo Jin-ae has taken a hiatus from her duties, according to a joint statement released by Aegis.
Seo has worked with the Aegis initiative since November 3308, providing insight into Thargoid communications thanks to a prototype cortical implant. This implant, inserted while Seo was a captive test subject for the clandestine Project Seraph, allows her to 'hear' the Thargoid hive mind.
The Aegis statement reads as follows:
"Seo Jin-ae has served Aegis faithfully, providing vital intelligence on Thargoid tactics at considerable physical and mental cost. Following several months of recuperation since a medical emergency last October, Seo has chosen to leave the Aegis facility in Duamta. We wish her all the best and look forward to her safe return."
Attached was a message from Seo:
"After Titan Cocijo exploded in Sol, I had my best night's sleep in years. No sounds in my head to

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Wing Commander Academy viewers often come away from the experience with one enduring question: what was the deal with Viking? Viking (or Victoria as she prefers to be known on her own time) is a human pilot who appears only in Wing Commander Academy's first episode. She is part of Blair and Maniac's class at the flight school. She is part of the training mission that opens the episode, she flirts with Blair afterwards and then during the simulated dogfight she is the one that accidentally shoots down Jazzman.

At the end of the episode she appears in civilian clothes on the tarmac and informs Bair that the experience has taught her she can't be responsible for killing anyone. Instead, she is leaving the military and offers him the opportunity to come too. He refuses and the episode ends with her walking away sadly as his Scimitar blasts off into space. It's a poignant moment, especially when informed

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's an interesting little eBay pickup: a free pass to see a preview of the Wing Commander movie! The screening took place on a Tuesday, March 9th 1999, in Fresno California. This was just a couple days before the movie released which means it was for a press screening where various outlets were allowed to preview the movie to prepare their reviews for the following Friday. These passes would've been distributed to the public to allow people to fill out the rest of the theater… and hopefully those people would pass along good word of mouth to their friends. Here's a nice high quality scan of the ticket:

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

An aggressive trade war in Alliance space appears to have been won by supporters of Mahon.
The recent withdrawal of Sirius Corporation from Allied military infrastructure created a significant opportunity for member state companies. The shipment of cargo to key locations has been used as a barometer of success between two trade blocs, formed around Edmund Mahon and Nakato Kaine respectively.
After two weeks, the trade bloc favouring Mahon has been declared the winner by analysts and pundits. Irfan Karim of the Alliance Tribune noted that the Mahon trade bloc is 'likely to secure the biggest and most lucrative contracts over the coming weeks.'
Participants in the trade war can now collect their rewards:
Supporters of Edmund Mahon's trade bloc can find their rewards at Bowersox Port in Winiama.
Supporters of Nakato Kaine's trade bloc can find their rewards at Fuca Dock in Apura.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Typos! Don't you hate them? Well, I don't… because they've added at least two Kilrathi fighters to the Wing Commander canon! It may come as a surprise to many but the people involved in writing a Wing Commander tie-in weren't always players of the games they were adapting. Writers and editors often relied on the series bible produced by Origin's creative services group to get the nuts and bolts of the universe correct. As a result, it was easy for small errors to make it to press… especially when they involved words that weren't "real" like Kilrathi ship types. Here are two times when letting the wrong name go to print added a little bit of mystery to our world… and one where it didn't!

Our first example is the Grakhi, a ship type mentioned one time in End Run. From the text, reprinted below, it's pretty clear that Dr. Forstchen had intended to use 'Grikath' for the ship – they're described as heavy

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Hell in the Pacific which inspired the look and feel of the Wing Commander movie. You can find details on that as well as how to watch along with us in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Greetings WingNuts,

It's no secret that most of us love Star Trek and we generally felt that The Motion Picture is a film that becomes more and more compelling the older it gets. What was once decried as slow and moody now feels impressive and relevant. And it's really the only of the Star Trek movies that directly follows the characters as they were in the original TV show.

The Wing Commander connection this time around was that Chris Roberts asked Wing Commander composer George "The Fatman" Sanger to pattern the original game's music after Jerry Goldsmith's spectacular Star Trek The Motion Picture score. I have a tin ear, but others in our party did claim they could hear the inspiration! Here are the main themes for both if you'd like to compare them yourself.

Another connection between ST:TMP and Wing Commander is that the film was Syd Mead's first project as a concept artist for film. He was

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Today we're looking at a pair of 'trade ads'. These are magazine advertisements that mention Wing Commander because they're promoting different pieces of middleware that were used in the creation of the series. The first is from the July 1995 issue of Next Generation magazine which promotes Wing Commander III's use of Silicon Graphics' graphics computer to generate its CG sequences:

Here's an excerpt from Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander III where Chris Douglas talks about the team's then-intense SGI requirements:

CD: Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. The first and greatest surprise for the artists was that we had about two years worth of stuff to do, but only one year of time to do it. The second surprise was the hardware. We needed high-tech computers. We needed lots of them. At first we thought that one Indigo II, and three Blue Indy computers would do the trick. Then we realized that we couldn’t

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

What's the buzz? More Hornets! An artist named ulimann644 has built a new CG model of the Hornet and posted some wondeful compositions on DeviantArt. You can find a wonderful gallery of their other work here... and we can't wait to see what the next Wing Commander ship will be!

F-36 Hornet (DeviantArt)

This is my first WING COMMANDER mesh - a few others will follow this year.

I've started with the F-36 HORNET from the first WC-PC-Game. I made some modifications in the hope that the fighter will look better than in the templates.

Hope you like it.

Software:
- Lightwave 2024
- Photoshop

Combat Space Patrol (DeviantArt)

This is my first WING COMMANDER Wallpaper with my F-36 HORNET mesh.

KILLER BEE 701, flown from Lieutenant-Colonel Deion "COOL TOUCH" Grafton, and KILLER BEE 707, flown from 2nd-Lieutenant Carrie "SILVER" Langdon, are on patrol.

Hope you like it.

Software:
- Lightwave 2024
- Photoshop
- ImageFX

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Back in February when we watched Battle of Britain, people jokingly complained that they would rather watch Paul Verhoeven's disasterpiece Showgirls instead of another war movie. I responded that if we watched all four remaining war movies in the series then we could take a break from Wing Commander-related movies and watch it. Well, last week's screening of Hell in the Pacific made that a reality so this Friday we'll be watching Showgirls!

Showgirls is a 1995 erotic drama which famously bombed at the box office. But it was also the film Paul Verhoeven's similarly underappreciated Starship Troopers, a favorite of movie club. Could it also be underrated? Or at least maybe ridiculously fun? We'll find out this week! Please note that this is not part of the official movie series; there will be no after action report for Showgirls! But it should be a good time, regardless. You can join us this Friday via

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The cat is out of the bag… the WCAT, that is! AllTinker has released the first public beta of his monumental Wing Commander AllTinker overhaul mod! This is a patch for the original DOS version of Wing Commander that adds the speed limiter it has been missing all these years. This is a big, big deal. The patch works on both actual hardware and in DOSBox which means that anyone, anywhere can finally play the original Wing Commander the way it was meant to be played. The project also adds a host of bug and even content fixes (no more Dart and Joker!) and adds support for 4-axis, 4-button joysticks... which means Wing Commander should play great with a controller! AllTinker writes:

The most critical thing it does is introduce game-wide sync-to-blank-based speed limiting. To do this properly required a huge number of code changes as many "scenes" in the game are coded slightly differently, requiring

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We've updated the Cockpit Reference to include the redrawn versions of the four original Wing Commander ships as they appeared in the Super NIntendo (SNES) port of the game! If you've only played one or the other, you might be surprised by how different the other looks beyond having distinct aspect ratios… the Scimitar's layout in particular is totally rearranged! We've put together a 'normal' and 'alarms active' version for each of the ships.

I also made some new notes about differences between the two platforms:

• The SNES version does not have damage states; your cockpit never sparks or scars, there are no exposed wire or scorched panel graphics.
• The hit indicators and the fuel warning lights are either non functional or removed entirely in the SNES version.
• The 'sides' of the Hornet cockpit aren't actually clear; you can't see the skybox through them.
• The afterburner speeds are significantly

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

An Imperial strike force has launched a surprise assault against the Archon Delaine's flagship, the Mictlan, in what many are calling a long-awaited act of retribution.
The offensive took place in the Beta-3 Tucani system, where Delaine is believed to have attended a gathering of notorious underworld figures. Witnesses reported intense fighting around the Mictlan, with Imperial vessels engaging both the pirate dreadnought and its escorts.
Casualty reports are unconfirmed, but several pirate affiliated ships were destroyed or forced to flee.
A brief statement from Emperor Arissa's spokesperson confirmed Imperial involvement:
"Let this serve as an answer to the provocations of August last year. Those who threaten the Emperor or her citizens will be dealt with using proportionate force."
The attack appears to be a response to Archon Delaine's boasts following previous assassination attempts on

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Mac is back with more lore! This time he's taking on the very complicated subject of the F-90 Hellcat V medium fighter, the middle-of-the-road ship that kicks off both Wing Commander III and Wing Commander IV "prepped, primed, loaded, locked and ready to kick some ass." As always, Mac has created literally oodles of cool animation to show off the ship… and his fantastic presentation and serious treatment of Wing Commander's lore is already converting casual observerse to our universe! You can find the Hellcat video here (embedded below) and be sure to check out Mac's previous work here.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that inspired Wing Commander in some way… except this week in which the movie did not inspire Wing Commander in any way. Tonight's film is Showgirls and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. You can find details on that as well as how to watch along with us in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Greetings WingNuts,

The Wing Commander movie club is back from Hell in the Pacific and we were surprised by how interesting this movie we had never heard of before was! Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune are the only actors in the film, enemies unable to communicate abandoned on an island in the pacific during World War II. They must go from deadly foes to reluctant friends in a compelling anti-war story with great acting and very meaningful cinematography. The end result is more like an overly-lush stage play than any of the epic war films we've seen in previous weeks… totally unexpected, to say the least!

While Hell in the Pacific was absolutely the prototype for Enemy Mine and at least three Star Trek episodes we could not find the Wing Commander connection. We're going to make the extremely rare claim that there isn't an apparent one. Chris Brown, VFX director on the Wing Commander movie, cited Hell in

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a case of escort duty you DO want to pull: AEdwardBaker is back with another fantastic piece of Wing Commander art! This one is called Exeter Escort and it shows a mighty Exeter battleship escorting the famed Tiger's Claw. Maybe it's the Formidable! You can find the original on DeiantArt and more of their fantastic work here.

Exeter class destroyer escouting the carrier Tiger's Claw. Ships from Wing Commander.

Done in Blender.