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Quote from Star Trek Online News-Bot

During the upcoming 2018 Winter Event, players participating in the festivities available at Q’s Winter Wonderland can earn Winter Prize Vouchers (2018) by running the “Fastest Game on Ice” once per day. Earning a total of 1000 vouchers will allow players to complete an Event Reputation project that rewards a Fek'Ihri S'torr Warship [T6]! Once this starship is obtained by any character on your account, all of the characters on your account will be able to claim the Fek'Ihri S'torr Warship [T6] from the Account Claim tab within the Event Store (in the Event Reputation window). We are also excited to announce that this starship will be the available on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on the same date! Fek'Ihri S'torr Warship [T6] The Fek'Ihri S’torr Warship is a fearsome Fek'Ihri design, with highly specialized technology onboard that shows why the Fek’Ihri have been haunting the

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

About a decade ago, there was a push to modernize Strike Commander and implement a fan remake that could be playable on the then-emerging field of VR/AR headsets. The thought was that it would be similar to the WC4 Remake and be an up-cycling that built on the game's original assets. Eventually the development led by Fabien Sanglard cooled, but with his code publicly available, Remi Leonard has since resumed development over the last couple years. He's put together the beefy video below to show off the latest progress. It's great to see there's still plenty of people out there that appreciate the other Origin franchises!

Progress on the strike commander remake based on fabien sanglard's work (some gameplay footage, conversation, flight simulation, transition, source code available at GitHub - remileonard/libRealSpace: Tools to parse and render Origin Systems RealSpace engine assets..

Thanks to

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

A fringe religion that worships the Thargoids has come under the spotlight in a new academic article.

The author, Dr Alfred Ulyanov, is a leading expert in exotheology. He summarised his work for the media:

"A recent report by Gethin Okonkwo highlighted the emergence of doomsayer cults in response to the return of the Thargoids. But few are as strange as my current object of study – an organisation that considers the Thargoids to be not merely alien, but divine."

"This mysterious sect doesn't have a formal name. The central tenet of its faith is that the Thargoids we have encountered so far are messengers – dark angels sent to prepare us for the true sacred presence, which will soon enter our plane of existence from another universe. They refer to this as the Far God."

"As with many monotheistic belief structures, this cult considers the Far God to be unknowable and omnipotent, but also

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

In their original print form, the original seven Baen Wing Commander novels each open with an excerpt in their front matter. It's typically an action scene from later in the book intended to sell the book to readers not familiar with the franchise. And each one of these previews had a unique "tagline". Because this front matter isn't included in the ebook versions of the novels, these risk being lost to history… until now! Here they are, for posterity:

Freedom Flight - LEARNING BY DOING…
End Run - "Form up, you know your targets."
Fleet Action - THE LAST BEST HOPE OF MAN
Heart of the Tiger - TORA! TORA! TORA!
The Price of Freedom - LAST CONTACT
Action Stations - SCREAM-AND-LEAP! (THE KILRATHI HAVE A WORD FOR IT)
False Colors - NOW IT'S YOUR TURN...

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Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Today we've got a scan helpfully uncovered by the Out of Print Archive. It's a review of the 3DO edition of Super Wing Commander from June 1994. We've seen an uptick in SWC sharing lately, which is nice to see. We always love it when under appreciated parts of the WC universe get their chance to shine. This official remake of WC1 is certainly an oddity, but it's also fascinating in so many ways!

On the subject of SWC, I noticed this tweet was "doing numbers," as the kids say. You've got to be able to laugh at yourself sometimes, and this is a funny exchange. A lot of the comments seem to reference Chris Roberts, and we would like to point out that he wasn't involved in this one.

Every time I think Super Wing Commander's voice acting couldn't possibly get any worse, it pulls out a scene like this: pic.twitter.com/osWAc8Cd4T

— Kimimi (@_Kimimi) August 4, 2022

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

As the saying goes, great artists steal... and what we're looking at today is a case of great artists stealing from themselves! We thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at StarLancer's cutscenes to pick out assets and finished footage that it reuses from the Wing Commander movie. StarLancer's cinematics were developed by the same artists at Digital Anvil who worked on the Wing Commander movie with the two projects overlapping for a time. As a result, a number of 3D models made it from one to the other and (in the case of the game's various act breaking interstitial news reports) several completed sequences from the movie were used to sort of decorate the background of StarLancer! Let's take a closer look...

Intro

StarLancer's introduction shows the Coalition's dastardly Pearl Harbor-style attack on the Alliance and it includes several reused Wing Commander assets! The cinematic model for

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a great little time capsule from the fantastic X-Wing Game Series account. It shows a snapshot of the best selling PC games in early 1994. Due to print lead times, this would basically have depicted the holiday 1993 sales. Wing Commander Privateer and Academy are both included as they launched within a month of each other in September and August respectively. X-Wing and its Imperial Pursuit expansion are also up there. Plus, there's MS Flight Sim 5, the original Sim City, 7th Guest and more. What a time to be alive!

X-Wing, Imperial Pursuit together with Privateer and Wing Commander Academy (plus MS Flight Simulator 5.0) in the Top 10 best-selling PC games from February 1994 issue of the Electronic Entertainment mag.Great times for flight games!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Today marks 20 years since the original Xbox launched, and Microsoft commemorated the occasion by restarting their backwards compatibility program as rumored last month. More than 70 games from the original and 360 eras were added as part of this effort, but Wing Commander Arena wasn't among them. It was and continues to be a long shot that it'll be added to Xbox One/Series X, but the fact that they keep committing to this effort is a really good thing. All of these 10-20 year old titles get HDR enhancements and many get resolution or frame rate bumps. And if they keep going, there's still hope for Wing Commander yet. In the mean time, the Xbox 360 remains the platform where you can play Arena online. If that changes, you'll hear about it right here!

You can read more about Microsoft's latest backwards compatibility plans here and find the entire back catalog here. And if anyone's playing the

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Music_Guru tipped us off about some really exciting progress on the Xbox emulation front. I've known for years that people have been tinkering with this, but I had no idea that folks were this far along. illusion0001 over at Github has posted screenshots of Wing Commander Arena running on the Xenia emulator. The game apparently loads and allows you to go through the various game selection menus and even choose fighters, which is pretty impressive. Things crash when an actual game mode is launched, but this is still much farther into things than I would have expected. As the game still is not forward compatible with the Xbox One/Series X, this gives me some hope that something will persist in some form after Xbox 360 Live functionality is eventually discontinued. Until that point though, you can still buy the game for $9.99 and fire it up on you old vintage Xbox!

The menus work properly and the

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Electronic Arts and Microsoft have announced that Xbox Game Pass (PC and Ultimate) members finally have access to the EA Play catalog on PC. We reported last year that this would include the five Wing Commander games on the service, however, it appears that they've been removed from the EA Play subscription as part of yesterday's big update. The screenshots below show what the WC pages looked like before and after the removal. It was also announced last year that EA's Origin storefront would be going away, but that transition is still in progress and the Origin-branded store portal still carries the WC games for $4.99 each. In comparison, GOG typically charges $5.99 each, but they bundle WC1&2 together into one. They also frequently have sales that bring each package down to $1.49. While this is a bummer for the (admittedly tiny) handful of WC fans who may have been holding out for the new Xbox

Quote from EVERSPACE News-Bot

Caching up with other plaforms, we've just released a new patch on Xbox, too. Here's the changelog: New Features

• Added special "retro graphics" option that is unlocked after finishing a hardcore mode run

Tweaks

• Encounters: Nerfed Engine Booster MK2 and MK3 efficiency
• Increased camera range in action freeze

Bugfixes

• Fixed Splitter glyph additional projectiles not homing in on targets anymore
• Fixed blueprint drop probability for higher tiers being too low if no more tier one blueprints are available
• Potential fix for Okkar Corvettes and Outlaw Drone Carriers occasionally bouncing away when destroyed
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to accidentally overwrite normal mode perks with hardcore mode perks
• Fixed Grey Goo damaging player from greater distance if player has a tractor beam installed
• Fixed hardcore mode "Anti Consumerism" handicap carrying over from sector 6 to sector 7
• Fixed

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Earlier this year, Xeen Music published an incredible Wing Commander II and Academy archival soundtrack. Now they're back with a similar release for the wonderful-but-oft-forgotten Words of Ultima: Martian Dreams. Like Wing Commander, Martian Dreams used the OriginFX graphics engine and was produced by the great Warren Spector (who also appears as a character!). Martian Dreams' composers include Wing Commander veterans George "The Fatman" Sanger and Dana Glover. The album is a comprehensive 57-track collection which is available for purchase on Bandcamp or through the Xeen Music patreon. Like the Wing Commander album, this release is fully licensed from Electronic Arts and picking it up is a great way to show there's interest in Origin's classics!

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
An improved xeno scanner has been released to assist combat vessels engaged in anti-xeno operations.
Following increased calls from AX pilots that the existing xeno scanner's limited range was a hindrance, Professor Palin's team at Arque Laboratory delivered a redesign to manufacturers that extends the scanner's upper range to two kilometres.
Industrial complexes have worked overtime to distribute the latest model of xeno scanner. It is now available from military, high-tech and industrial planetary bases, as well as rescue megaships.

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The xeno-peace movement, which calls for communication with the Thargoids, has sought to rationalise the latest incursions.
Despite ongoing conflicts in the 42 n Persei, Chun Pindit and Tekkeitjal systems, Thargoid aggression has been attributed to defensive measures. Reports by journalists in those systems, which have focused on the increasingly aggressive Thargoid craft, have been labelled 'propaganda' endorsed by major media corporations.
The 'Thargoid Advocacy Project' - a label which many supporters of the movement use in calls to action - believes that the authorities must commit to establishing a dialogue with the aliens. Timothy Culver, a prominent activist for the xeno-peace cause, provided a statement to The Sovereign:
"The Thargoids did not invade our space. We invaded theirs. Entire nebulas and other regions have been inhabited by them for over a million years, but our leaders

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Dalton Chase, the former governor of Andavandul 1, has become a Federal congressman following victory in the recent special election.
Despite his relative youth and inexperience, many voters within the congressional district were influenced by Chase's charm and positive campaign message. His enthusiasm for opening diplomatic relations with the Thargoids resonated with younger voters. The Liberal Party also ran a creative PR campaign across social channels, which was amplified by many counter-cultural ICE-casters.
After formally swearing in and taking his oath of office, Congressman Chase proclaimed:
"I'm conscious that some view me as unorthodox or contrarian, perhaps even 'soft on Thargoids'. But I take the security of the Federation as seriously as any of my honourable colleagues. Achieving peace with another species, and thereby saving the lives of countless Federal citizens, would be

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
Deliveries to the Andavandul system have enabled the Thargoid Advocacy Project to begin preparations for a diplomatic mission.
Governor Dalton Chase, who is campaigning to become a member of the Federal Congress, arranged the initiative to create a non-partisan envoy vessel. Its objective will be to find ways to open communication with the Thargoids and make peaceful overtures to end the conflict.
Polly French, organiser of a Thargoid Advocacy Project rally in Andavandul, told the media:
"War with the Thargoids represents multiple failures. A failure to imagine coexistence with another intelligent species. A failure to restrain our violent reactions to the unknown. By sending emissaries and opening diplomatic channels, we can prove that human civilisation is advanced enough to seek peace."
"I am grateful to Governor Chase for his generous funding and promotion of

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Investigations in the Hyades Sector YO-Q b5-1 system have confirmed that Thargoid vessels attacked and destroyed the Kingfisher megaship.
Vox Galactica published this on-the-scene report from field correspondent Ernesto Rios:
"Independent and Federal sources have verified that the Kingfisher was struck by multiple barrages from Thargoid weaponry. Medical teams are currently exploring the wreckage of the megaship in search of crew and passengers. Sadly, from what I've seen, the scale of the damage suggests that the chances of survival are extremely low."
"Further confirmation came with the discovery of a log made by Dr Elias Pope of Orion University, who was overseeing attempts to communicate with the Thargoids. Although I have yet to hear this recording myself, it apparently describes exactly what happened when the Taranis anomaly passed through the system."
"As news of the tragedy spreads, it

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

A claim that the rogue signal sources form part of a potential Thargoid offensive has been disputed by many in the pro-peace movement.
A joint statement by respected xenologists Professor Alba Tesreau, Professor Ishmael Palin and Ram Tah concluded that the approaching anomalies are a reaction to events in HIP 22460, and may have dire consequences for humanity. The eight signal sources are projected to arrive in the core systems within weeks.
Advocates for the Thargoid Advocacy Project and similar xeno-peace groups have rejected the idea that increased hostilities with the Thargoids is inevitable. As community liaison Bernadette Wells said on the Joy Senne ICE-cast:
"Despite this ominous claim from three respected scientists, they have offered no hard evidence to support the assumption that the anomalies are hostile. I'm sorry, I know Seo Jin-ae has suffered enormously as part of Salvation's

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

A campaign from the Holloway Bioscience Institute to build a xenological research centre has concluded successfully.

Chief researcher Dr Roy Casimir told the media:

"Thanks to Nahuaru Crimson Bridge Int we now have sufficient materials to build a planetary outpost where our scientists can study lifeforms identified by the galactic community."

"We are also grateful for the exploration data provided by many pilots, which will help us create a new research catalogue."

Pilots who took part in the campaign can now collect their rewards from Williams Vision in the Nahuaru system.

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
A range of alien objects have been delivered to the Arque system for Professor Ishmael Palin's study of the Thargoids.
The conclusion of the project was announced by Professor Palin:
"I am highly impressed with the number of Thargoid probes, resin and sensors that were delivered to Abel Laboratory. Collecting and transporting these items can be a hazardous task, so I deeply appreciate the effort made by pilots to obtain them."
"It is becoming increasingly urgent to improve our understanding of the Thargoids' biomechanical technology. There is no sign that hostilities are about to end, so the need to produce defences has become paramount. Only through ensuring our research focuses on up-to-date samples can we be sure that we are working as efficiently as possible."
Contributors can now collect their rewards from Baird Gateway in the Arque system. This includes Grade 5