Wing Commander

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The Combat Information Center team is proud to announce that we will be launching the Wing Commander community's first-ever weekly streaming show. The first episode of ALL WINGS CONSIDERED will air on YouTube this coming Thursday, February 21st at 7 PM Eastern. All Wings Considered is a live, weekly and informal look at the Wing Commander universe and fandom which includes gameplay, behind the scenes stories, community news and an ever-growing collection of regular segments and features! We've been developing the show for several months now as an outlet for our love of the series and are excited to start sharing with the rest of the world.

The first episode of All Wings Considered will also include the first iteration of a Wing Commander book club! This week we will be discussing the first four chapters of Wing Commander: End Run and everyone is welcome to join the live conversation via

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The Love Arrow continues to warm our hearts in this cold month. It seems physically smaller every year though.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

SciFi at War

is an interesting mod for Star Wars: Empire at War that we recently stumbled upon. It mashes up different franchises, such as Star Wars, Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, into one mega game. The video below shows various Halo ships fighting craft from Wing Commander. It doesn't seem like the WC fleet is fully fleshed out, and I can't quite tell if the

mod

is still active, but it's a pretty cool concept! You can grab it at the

Steam Workshop

. If this just makes you want to play a WC RTS game, you can check out the

WC Invasion

mod, which is also for Empire at War.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Wing Commander has once again appeared live in concert! This time the WC1 music was performed by the Malmö Symphony Orchestra at the February 9

Joystick 11.0

convention (

translated

). Did anyone happen to make it there in person? We haven't found a first hand account yet, but it could have sounded like the video below from the graduation ceremonies of the

KTH Royal Institute of Technology

in Stockholm. Crazy enough, these two instances weren't the only

Swedish orchestra

to play Wing Commander in the last few years. Sweden's apparently the place to be if you want to hear live classical WC tunes!

Welcome to the eleventh edition of Joystick, Malmö Symphony Orchestra's annual music music concert!

Experience a magical evening filled with powerful, imaginative music from the world of computer and video games. Today, the genre is well-established and is found in many orchestras repertoires

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Check out this cool Italian budget release of Wing Commander III! I’ve seen Prophecy and several other Origin games in this same style. I love finding different Wing Commanders from around the world!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

George Oldziey

reports that the Wing Commander

Jazz Albums

have been shipped! If you haven't sent your address in - or you don't receive yours in a week or so, let George know what's up! The cover art by

SabreAce

just looks fantastic. Some of the initial plans for a future campaign to record even more Wing Commander music are in the very preliminary stages, so stay tuned in the coming months for that. It's been a long road to get all of this amazing music put together, but the results have been very impressive!

Greetings all! All the CDs for which I have received shipping instructions have been shipped. I sent off the last of them today, mostly overseas. So if you have not received them in a week or so let me know. Most of you should have already received them. I hope you are enjoying them!

I'll keep you all posted on when the next phase of Volume 2 orchestral recording begins.

Thank

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

pahandav

has created a MEGA Overview of the Wing Commander series. He covers each of the main games, which is all of the PC games except the expansions, Secret Ops or Arena. Of course it would be nice if those were included too, but it's still pretty impressive how exhaustive the video is as it takes nearly a full hour to cover the landscape. Lots of streamers hit WC1 or WC3/4, so it's a nice change to hear someone detailing out Academy nav points, Armada shipyards and the nuances of Privateer 2 videos. I suppose we'll just have to wait for the GIGA Overview for more!

In this video, I provide an overview of the 9 main games of the Wing Commander series released between 1990 and 1997.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

DocteurJ

is back with another

OldiesGamesTV

episode in his long running French language series on Wing Commander. The focus for this segment is the epic introduction to Wing Commander 4 and associated early sequences. He uses the DVD edition to ensure quality is top notch. It's great to see Wingnuts keeping the fandom global!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Adm_Maverick

took a break from his

tabletop

game to complete his impressive Tallahassee cruiser

model

. He's designed it so each subcomponent fits together tightly and the overall structure balances well. As an extra bonus, you can see how his

miniature fighters

scale nicely, so he'll actually be able to use the 24" capship in his future gaming endeavors. Sounds like fun!

I've had another project I've been working on for a while: Scratchbuilding. I started with the Excalibur... realized I was in way over my head, took it back a step and worked on the Tallahassee Cruiser... lost the materials for that... and decided to go for broke and started over on the cruiser but built to be 24" long. I threw on the last parts of the Tallahassee Cruiser last night. I learned a lot from this build, mostly in the way of bracing and how to square parts of the model up.

That's one of the Hellcat tokens I

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

AircPirateNinsei

has completed his enlarged flying

Hornet fighter

. This update has a larger wingspan to fit more effective control surfaces and a larger powerplant. He'll be getting it airborne soon, and we can't wait to see! There's a lot of talent and skill that's obviously going into this. Follow the development at the

Flite Test Forums

.

The Hornet with a wingspan of 1000 mm (39.37 in) is ready2fly! :)The AUW is 513 g (18.10 oz). The Dry Weight (without battery) is 370 g (13.05 oz).The battery is a Turnigy nano-tech 4s with 1300 mAh.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We have a new poll today that asks about the many flavors of the

F-38 Talon

fighter. Some people may not be aware there's actually five distinct paint schemes out there. As the story goes, the corrupt Gemini Sector

Governor Menesch

illicitly sold untold numbers of the craft to rogue groups such as the

Church of Man

. This explains how commonplace they are in Privateer as well as why they're equally flown by both the local militia, Retros and random pirates. The model is also reused as the Kilrathi

Gratha

in Super Wing Commander. Finally, it shows up in Privateer 2 as an easter egg ship you race the Papagod clan to investigate. Which is your favorite to blow up?

They're listed in the graph as follows: 1: Unknown Ship (Privateer 2), 2: Gratha (Super Wing Commander), 3: Church of Man Talon (Privateer), 4: Militia Talon (Privateer), 5: Pirate Talon (Privateer)

The old poll shows we still

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

This is a crazy story! Everyone's favorite officially licensed top-down Xbox 360 Wing Commander shooter was released back in July 2007. In the original

press release

announcing its launch, EA confirmed that Wing Commander

Arena

was coming out in all markets where Xbox Live Arcade existed - except Japan. Finally, it's now available for

¥ 1,188

or about $11.

In confirming this unusual turn of events, Music_Guru was able to find a

cached

copy of the page from several weeks ago that still shows just the theme packs for sale. Interestingly, the Confed and Kilrathi Xbox

dashboard themes

were released in Japan back in 2007, and websites even

reviewed them separately

at the time. Arena is also listed in various '

new

release

' listings with a January 24, 2019 debut called out. If you're in Japan and still have your 360 hooked up, we'd love to hear about your experience. Are there any localization

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

...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

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

For those who haven't been closely following the development of Star Citizen lately, there have been a few interesting announcements on the project's financials and upcoming plans.

Cloud Imperium recently released an accounting document that details out how the company used its money form 2012 through 2017. They spent $193 million on development and other expenses during that time with more than $4 million per month going out in 2017. We know they hit $200 million in crowd funding in November, but they also have other resources such as $46 million in private investment raised in December.

The most visible development lately has been to bolster the game's persistent universe and core technology, but a roadmap to Squadron 42 has also been released. This is the single player campaign starring Mark Hamill and John Rhys-Davies, among others, which many Wing Commander fans have been waiting

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We're already a month into the new year, so it's just about time for our annual fan project contest to wrap up. If you haven't voted yet, there's still time! Lots of fans are out there making a difference in the WC community, so we know it can be hard to just pick one. Here are the nominees again. Vote below!

• Adm_Maverick's Papercraft Adventures started off with humble beginnings. We initially got to see some cool cardboard hobby ships, but his work grew quite a bit in 2018 to include reproducible miniature models and a tabletop game using these small ships.
• Dark Sentinel's Art is well known as the best Nephilim showcase in the known universe. It's most prominent in the WCP/SO MUP, but that's not the only project his efforts have helped!
• DefianceIndustries' Art is also synonymous with the high quality ships in the WCP/SO MUP, but that's just the beginning. His gorgeous ships

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Shout out to Origin’s 1993 “CD-ROM Edition” graphic. That’s how you know it’s a CD-ROM Edition!

They went with a much more subtle version from 94 to 95. Wings of Glory is so handsome!

And by 1996 you didn’t need to advertise that a PC game came on a CD. It shows up on the European Wing Commander IV box but not the domestic release.

They also had something called a CD>Hard Drive release. These didn’t have any CD-specific enhancements and instead just installed the disk version without all the swapping.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

DefianceIndustries

is back to modeling, and he's finished his long-awaited Kilrathi medium fighter. The Krant is a bit of an odd dog with its twin cockpits and unique styling. Everyone thinks of the Dralthi as a big bullseye in the sky, but I always thought the Krant made really good targets despite their heftier armor. Their name also works great

in

puns

, but Defiance already beat me to it.

I've had a half-finished Krant laying around forever, and I krant leave things in a half-finished state. So, here it is: the Vega sector's medium bomber and general target. Enjoy!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

AircPirateNinsei

has flown his

Hornet

model for the first time. Total duration aloft was just under ten seconds, but it really zooms. And even this brief flight provides valuable information. He's now in the process of remaking the craft about 25% larger in order to give it a bigger battery and more effective control surfaces. It's all very cool, and he's a very talented model maker!

Here a short video of the maiden crash.

The Hornet flies, but it needs more thrust and larger surfaces for the elevons. To fit a bigger battery (4s) in the small nose I will increase the wingspan from 800mm (31.5 in) to 1000mm (39.37 in).

The Hornet with 1000mm wingspan is almost finished. The lower part of the fuselage is still missing. A maximum of one 8" propeller fits. As motor I will try a RCTimer/DYS BC2830/8 1300KV (Max Power: 275W) with a 4s battery. Because of the larger area of the elevons I use two

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Adm_Maverick

has done quite a bit of work with his WC

tabletop game

. One focus has been the creation of quite a few new ship cards. Each one has a snappy header graphic, and he's created numerous variants to add additional flavor. A neat focus will be the interoperability of ships from different eras without the artificial constraints that each game's specific stat ranges bring. He's working on normalizing the specs now so there's a reasonable comparison of each craft regardless of when we see them in the games. You can see this detail and help provide feedback at the CIC Forums

here

.

One of the things I want to do with this game is to have a 'complete universe', by that I mean while it can have expansions that introduce new figthers and new group, it won't get new rules to segment it. Wing Commander 1 figthers should be able to operate in the same system as Wing Commander Prophecy

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Iceblade

is looking at setting up a new dynamic WC RPG and is now polling for interest. He's got extensive experience in past role playing games including both

MUSH

and

Forums

based adventures. This time, he's looking at using Discord, which has surged in popularity these past few years (the CIC's

#Wingnut

chat room is also on Discord!), so he's keeping up with the times. If you have questions or would like to let him know you're game, stop by the

CIC Forums

.

I am looking into setting up a Discord-based text roleplaying game with a mixture of scheduled events and free-form roleplaying by players. The game would be wiki-supported for information and logs.

Set in Gemini Sector, players will primarily play pilots onboard a carrier caught behind the enemy lines of a massive Kilrathi offensive throughout the sector. The carrier must push back to the front lines, gathering and rescuing surviving