Wing Commander

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ODVS got a lot of feedback on his first attempt at remastering the Privateer 2 video footage. A frequent request was that he use the higher quality footage sourced from Privateer 2 director Steve Hilliker's 25th Anniversary video released in May. There's no doubt that this content, derived from Beta SP tapes, is much nicer than the original CD-ROM footage, but there are certain tradeoffs inherent with using an analogue source for the AI/neural net processing. This new example video shows off all three side-by-side. The version enhanced from the CD has more crisp detail while the Beta remaster segments have better frame rate and color. It's a little hard to say which is better overall as it depends somewhat on the specific scene in question. Let ODVS know wha you think at the CIC Forums!

Because people on the CIC forums kept asking, I did an experiment remastering Steve Hilliker's footage from his

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It's easier to play your classic Wing Commander games today with DOSBox, GOG and compatibility patches like wcdx readily available, but there's also a certain magic to getting an old 386 or 486 running. Not everyone has the time or space to make that happen though, so Philip from RadioShack put together this video of the game running on a vintage Tandy 2500 SX/25. This would have been a pretty good system for getting the original Wing Commander going back in the day!

The planets aligned and I was able to get Wing Commander running on my Tandy 2500 SX / 25 Hard Drive model computer - a 25mhz 386 running DOS 6.2 with Sound Blaster audio. RadioShack pro tip - add EMM3686 to your config.sys file!

He's got an in-depth review of the machine here that's also a fun watch!

My first computer was a 1987 era Tandy 1000 that ran at about 4.77 MHz, so I find this fascinating.

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Wing Commander fans looking for new desktop wallpaper have been a little spoiled in recent years as fellow Wingnuts turn out practically professional grade renders based on new high quality assets. It wasn't always that way though, and there used to be a time when anyone with Microsoft Paint could (and did) kick out their own simple artwork and collages. Maze59077 set out to make something similar with a set of four vintage-style pieces. They commemorate key scenes in the three Kilrathi Saga adventures as well as a bonus setting from the Prophecy intro. Let him know what you think at the CIC Forums!

Hi Everyone, I have edited some special Kilrathi Saga art. Hope you like them.

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The French retro video gaming channel Rewind has posted a new retrospective on Wing Commander (3). It's all spoken in French, but it's a cool cut of WC material no matter what language you speak. Although the focus is on WC3, the series at large gets included towards the end. Here's AD's translation and summary:

Video is kind of a retrospective. They approach it from the angle that WC isn't that well remembered, which I don't agree with though I do feel that it could be slipping out of people's consciousness in later generations.

It starts off briefly mentioning a few other games like Mass Effect, X-Wing and No Man's Sky before saying that the video is going to talk about Wing Commander 3. They briefly point out some of the Chris Roberts influences in making the series and the basic setup of the story. They run throught the cast (Ginger's porn thing gets a mention) and the budget gets brought up.

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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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The Art of Nintendo Power and thepmann shared this delightful version of the famous sketch where Wing Commander is featured in Nintendo Power. It was pretty awesome to be skimming the magazine in 1992 and run across this! Now you can see what it looked like in ink before being colorized.

LOAF has some additional insight below. It's very impressive that they nailed the ships!

Super cool to see the original artwork for this!

• You can identify five distinct ships from Wing Commander I in the strip: Rapier, Hornet, Bengal, Dralthi and Krant.
• With two drawings of Kilrathi this comic strip technicality has more art of them than the actual SNES port (where they only show up on the VDU).

The terrible punch line also kind of happens on Wing Commander Academy.

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One of the many stars of the recent CIC Birthday celebrations was ODVS' effort to drastically enhance and remaster the footage from Wing Commanders 3, 4 and Prophecy. Since they turned out so well, fans naturally asked when they might expect a similar update to the Privateer 2 movies. That led to some tinkering which has already resulted in a couple of example clips! There are some challenges, of course. The best currently available footage leaves a lot to be desired, so his AI/neural net techniques don't have as much to work with. ODVS asked below whether these types of results are worth going through the rest of the cutscenes or if he should hold out for better source material becoming available. After checking out the previews, hit the comments link below to weigh in!

Well, for some reason I promised to look into remastering the Privateer 2 in-game FMV during the CIC Birthday party (I'm sure

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And that's what we have for tonight! While we're still digesting all of the wonderful things everyone put together for today, there's also so much to look forward to on the horizon. Since this is technically a birthday type of event, I've also got a birth of my own to share. We welcomed Georgianna Belle Reid to the family recently. Everyone is healthy and we are having a blast!

We know this has been a devastating year for many people. Even for those who haven't lost a loved one, not a single person has been spared from the strife and stressful impacts that 2020 has brought. But despite the coronavirus and everything from wildfires to floods and civil unrest, there is new life and hope for the future. The CIC's tiny role in all of this is to be a small island of stability in a tumultuous landscape. Throughout all our efforts, we've made great friends and encourage each other to keep moving

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It's time for our annual birthday poll! With the coronavirus keeping people away from outdoor activities, we've seen a few more folks than normal find their way to the CIC this year. Welcome! We know most of you have been coming year after year, and we appreciate your support as well! See where you fit in and vote below!

The old poll asked about the ship you felt the safest flying. The broadsword was the clear winner with a third of the vote. The Devastator and Longbow split the next third. All three are absolute powerhouses that can really take a beating! I'm surprised to see the Freij MK II beat the Galaxy though!

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It wouldn't be a CIC Birthday Party without cake, so here it is! This year Lacey made two mini cakes to commemorate the dual celebration of the CIC's 22nd and Wing Commander's 30th anniversaries!

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elend's vectorized Wingleader logo was a big hit, so he decided to make more. And once he got started, he couldn't leave anything out! The results are twenty gorgeous logos based on the prime art for each game. He closely followed the reference art available to make each one as accurate as possible. Plus, he's made several more Origin-centric logos for good measure. Each one is backed up by a PDF that can be infinitely scaled to fit whatever your logo needs are! Grab them all in one convenient pack here (51 meg zip). And check out the massive logo bomb below - they look pretty slick all lined up!

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We've posted plenty of visual treats so far, so now here's something specifically designed to please your ears. Improbable Cadence first put together this beautiful rendition of the opening credits music back in March, but now he's actually sync'd it up with the WC1 intro (so there's a still a visual component after all).

I've always wanted to hear a more realistic rendition of the main theme, but I couldn't find anything similar to what I had in mind -- which I guess was something in between Superman and Star Wars. 30 years later, I finally got around to making it myself.

My goal was to retain as much of the original MIDI as possible and match the overall voice, while expanding the instrumentation and textures to add variety, giving each section a different feel. Based on the Roland MT-32 MIDI tracks by Dave Govett / Team Fat.

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With WC3 and WC4 both receiving fantastic updates, ODVS couldn't leave Prophecy out! It's received the same definitive updates as WC4 and looks just as gorgeous. Players will have to first upgrade their copy of Prophecy to the DVD edition with this patch. Then the clips can be dropped right in! The only issue is figuring out which game to replay first!

• Wing Commander Prophecy: version 4.0, English (3.0 gig zip)
• Wing Commander Prophecy: version 4.0, German (3.0 gig zip)

To celebrate Wing Commander CIC's birthday and the thirtieth anniversary of the Wing Commander franchise, I'm proud to release Wing Commander Prophecy HD Video Pack V4.0!

As well as containing the highest quality remaster I've yet managed to produce, V4.0 contains the following improvements that make it the Definitive Edition:

• All FMV footage remastered to 1080p Full HD using Machine Learning AI
• Frame rate standardised in filmed sequences

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The WC3 footage is great, but the enhanced WC4 footage is absolutely exquisite. This is the game where we have some of the best source material to start with, and it's also super easy to upgrade your copy of the game to play these high res clips. Just drop the files into the video folder of the DVD version of the game. GOG carries the DVD version by default, so it's cheap and readily available. Today's release is the fifth and "definitive" launch. It incorporates all of ODVS' extensive learnings and techniques and even includes some fixes for broken/omitted clips on the DVD. It truly is the definitive way to play the original (at least until the WC4 Fan Remake is finished!).

• Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, English, Pack 1 (3.3 gig zip)
• Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, English, Pack 2 (3.2 gig zip)
• Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, German, Pack 1 (3.2 gig zip)
• Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, German, Pack 2

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When ODVS first set out to remaster the video from Wing Commander games, the DVD source footage for WC4 and Prophecy was an obvious choice. It wasn't clear whether the very low quality WC3 material could be significantly upgraded. But not only was Owen able to pull together a complete cut back in July, but now he's taken it up another level and made version 2.0 available! Everything is here in 1080p at 30 frames per second, and the overall contrast has been fixed throughout. Check out the trailer and grab it below! Note that there is not yet a way to integrate the clips into the game, but this pack solves a big chicken-and-egg problem. If enhanced videos didn't exist, fans wouldn't have a reason to figure out how to include them. Now they do!

• Wing Commander 3: version 2.0 (3.7 gig zip)

To celebrate Wing Commander CIC's birthday and the thirtieth anniversary of the Wing Commander franchise, I'm

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Here's a treat you've never seen before! This is the trailer that was created to test Digital Anvil's ability to produce a Wing Commander Movie. It was quietly shown at the 1998 SXSW in Austin, Texas. Thanks to Banjo, now you can see it too!

In order to raise interest in a Wing Commander feature film among prospective partners and raise money for production by selling future distribution rights, Digital Anvil produced a short one minute trailer featuring an action scene.

Astute fans will notice that, while the Kilrathi capital ship is visually very similar to the Concom seen in the final movie, the space fighters are more detailed versions of ships in the games themselves. The human pilots are flying WC1 and 2 style Rapiers, and the Kilrathi appear to be piloting Vaktoths (previously seen in WC3). Shot in 1997 not too long after WC4 shipped, the cockpit sets and costumes are left over from the

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DefianceIndustries is ready to share his latest project! We saw earlier this year that he was putting together some beautiful animated ships, and now they all come together in an exciting new teaser. I don't have a lot more to say - you just need to watch this thing in action!

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The WC4 Fan Remake team has another exciting trailer to show off their latest progress! Here we see ODVS' fantastic high res video combined with some of the latest dazzling next gen visuals. Check out the video to see the spiffed up ships, upscaled game flow rooms and retro visual mode.

The upcoming Wing Commander IV - The Price of Freedom: Remastered mod is a fan preservation project; it was created for experimentation, education & research, is completely nonprofit, and should be considered fair use as stated in the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. section 107. To install this mod you must own an original, unaltered, retail-release of the game. Please, respect the rights of the copyright holders and purchase a copy of the original product if you do not own one already.

Learn more at WCRespace.com. The original game can be purchased at GOG and Origin.

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eddieb is back with an all new Flight Commander! The original was a very popular Wing Commander-themed modding engine that formed the core of multiple fan projects about a decade ago. It ran its course with the technology available at the time, but now Flight Commander 2 is here and ready to give budding modders a brand new platform to launch from! It features advanced support for shipboard sequences and a slick recreation of the Vision Engine. It even runs in a web browser! It's still in the basic stages, but you can walk around, jump in a fighter and take pot shots in space. Jump straight in via the weblink here. Currently, you must use Firefox for the web demo to work. You can also download a Windows standalone version from the CIC forums here.

Flight Commander 2 is in the works. It's still very early, but here is the first demo. You can walk around on foot on your carrier. Fire guns,

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Stinger has released his long awaited and highly anticipated update to wcdx! It now fully supports Wing Commander 2 and both Special Operations packs. This means a handful of annoying bugs and incompatibilities have been fixed, thus enabling the Kilrathi Saga version of the game to compete with DOSBox/GOG as the ideal way to play the originals in 2020. This release also includes bonus tools to explore the game's data files and listen to the soundtrack. Grab it below!

wcdx version 2.2 is here! After years of empty promises and unmet expectations, I can finally present to you the next official release of wcdx!

What's that, you say? Version 2.2? But what ever happened to 2.0 and 2.1? Last anybody knew, there was just an alpha that kinda-sorta worked for WC2! What gives?

wcdx gives, that's what gives! Specifically, it gives you Wing Commander 2, and Special Operations 1, and Special Operations 2!