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Let's look at some chalkboards! The kill board in Wing Commander I is one of those great immsersive touches: instead of scoring points like an arcade, you stay in the game world and compete with the characters you recognize.

All the characters' kills increase as the game progresses but they start from the same numbers. It's nice environmental storytelling, too: you can tell right off that Maniac is the rookie, Iceman is the top gun, etc. There's a million untold stories in this picture!

That environmental storytelling started to become linear storytelling as the series went on: here's a bit added to the Super Wing Commander Claw Marks that tells the story of how Maniac became an ace (as had already been reflected on the original board):

Quick aside: the kill board is based on actual 'scoreboards' used aboard aircraft carriers, particularly in World War 2. Here's a neat article with some history and

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Last year we mentioned Plywood Fiend's alternative take on a Wing Commander playthrough. Rather than just add typical commentary to the stream, he spices up the episodes with his own animations, supplemental dialogue and unique captions. After winning the Vega Campaign, he's moved on and is now well into the Secret Missions. You can find a few samples below or check out his full Wing Commander playlist on YouTube here.

Woe, calamity and me, for I have returned with more stuff. Specifically I've gone back to do a play through of Secret Missions 1 in my own peculiar fashion; the playlist can be found here (scroll down for the new material, I'm currently up to the Gwenhyvar mission.) Below are a few samples of the added extras I've twisted in, most notably is a pixel art animation I made showing a fateful distress call from the TCS Johann which, suffice it to say, was not the luckiest of vessels, as

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Today has been exhausting, and we know many of you are exhausted too. We'll be back with some more upbeat Wing Commander stories tomorrow, but for now, here's the topically relevant angle on current events: the owner of the WC franchise, Electronic Arts, has announced tepid support for abortion rights in the US. Although they didn't come out and use the word "abortion" in their public-facing statement, they have internally communicated to employees that they "will soon offer expanded travel health benefits" to employees seeking basic healthcare that they will only be able to access out of state. They join a number of other game developers and tech companies who have announced similar measures today. With the competitiveness of the industry at a fever pitch these days, these types of benefits will be critical incentives in the future.

Anyhow, take care of yourselves out there. Hit us up on Discord

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A summary of key events around the rise and fall of the tri-superpower organisation Aegis.
The Alliance, Empire and Federation created Aegis in 3303 to lead xenological research and coordinate defensive actions against the Thargoids. With fears that the alien species might one day overwhelm human-controlled space, Aegis's role was to spearhead the resistance against a common enemy.
There were concerns that Aegis might adopt the same unethical practices as its notorious predecessor INRA, which had been formed back in 3125 during the First Thargoid War. But the new agency was welcomed by most, providing intelligence on Thargoid activity as well as advanced weapons.
Since capital ships were vulnerable to the Thargoid shutdown field, Aegis soon had no choice but to rely heavily on independent pilots to perform ship-to-ship combat. And despite its effectiveness at coordinating defence, it was

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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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CD1188 Entertainment has posted a neat video of the latest AI upscaling and image processing techniques. They're using a screenshot from the WC3 introduction to demonstrate how amazing the technology is. AD asked the Wing Commander community's resident neural net expert, ODVS, for his take and he provided some additional context:

They're using Gigapixel AI with its new Facial Recovery algo (which was just released). I'm already doing a deep-dive into experimenting with it for motion. It's impressive, but you hit the uncanny valley pretty hard. Sadly, they've currently only trained it for static images. I suspect it will be a while before it gets incorporated into their motion-friendly models, but I have no doubt that's coming. I am already doing experiments, though.

Even if this isn't quite ready to actually animate videos with, the technology remains incredibly impressive!