Happy Birthday Wing Commander! Check Out Map In High Res Glory (March 12, 2016)

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
The Wing Commander Movie was released in theaters 17 years ago today, and to celebrate, LOAF and Thomas Hennessy have digitized the film's elaborate universe map. It all comes together in one whopping image that's nearly 20 megapixels big. But since we're Wing Commander fanatics, it was also carefully photographed in individual segments. While this delivers fantastic detail, it also leaves quite a task to someone brave enough to stitch together all the frames in Photoshop. There are about 30 different angles, although they've uploaded all 111 original images so everyone can see the raw material. If you'd like to try your hand at making one massive file, or if you'd just like to take a look at all the beautiful space art zoomed in, check out the photos on Google Drive or download here (500 meg zip). Hang tight while the photo below loads - it's 10 megs alone!





Happy birthday to the Wing Commander movie, which hit theaters 17 years ago today! We've taken several dozen high res detail photos of Chris' Wing Commander map... any Photoshop aces out there want a puzzle/project? It was created for the intro/credits of the Wing Commander movie, though you only see part of it (with glowing FX) there! I think it's super cool that it uses the same sector layout as the WC Prophecy Universe Map, but styled like it was made by explorers.

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Original update published on March 12, 2016
 
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Damn, that's a weird map! It's neat, but the constellation thing is such a peculiar idea. I assume that even though the sectors are placed the same way as in the "ordinary" WC universe map from WCP, the star positions themselves do not match up? It would be pretty awesome if they did, though.

...Oh, and of course it makes sense that the constellation closest to where the game (and the movie) begins is Libra, with the fate of the war hanging in the balance and all that :).
 
I've seen them before, but looking at the full size map I have to ask why they have both english and the odd script (that it would seem is some kind of Pilgrim dialect?) on the map. From what I can tell they also show up on the cross itself. If it was a pilgrim map, wouldn't it just have Pilgrim symbols on it? Anyway we see paladin taking notes off of the charts in his quarters. I'll have to check to see if they have similar symbols too (if you can even get a good enough look at them).

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I've seen them before, but looking at the full size map I have to ask why they have both english and the odd script (that it would seem is some kind of Pilgrim dialect?) on the map. From what I can tell they also show up on the cross itself. If it was a pilgrim map, wouldn't it just have Pilgrim symbols on it?

I don't think it's that unusual. Many cultures intermix their native written language with a popular foreign one.

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Well, it's late and I haven't looked at it too closely but I thought I'd share what I have. The very edge of the frame is missing in the upper left and bottom middle and I was thinking of just filling that in from the full shot. Or I could just crop it and not worry about it.

I'd fill in the border sections with the lower res material you have to avoid cropping anything out.
 
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SO FLUFFING COOL! Let me know if there's anything in there that needs to be reshot. We've still got the map hanging in our makeshift lightroom, but will probably need to take it down in the next few days to make room for mocap pickups.

I don't think the two types of script are odd; remember that Pilgrims are an ofshoot of humans... so it'd make sense that they'd have ties to both languages (well, more unlikely is that a particular group of humans developed their own separate script in a matter of centuries, but I digress...) Actually, the oddest thing about it is more that they'd have charted and correctly named the sectors on the far side of Kilrathi space. Of course, the map isn't necessarily diegetic... and much of it is never seen on screen. But it is truly a fascinating piece of artwork. (First thing I said when I saw it in Chris' office: someday, I'm going to digitize and study that!)
 
Reviewing it here, the only note I have is that Trk'Pahn is a bit blurry. Try using 679A5353 for that area.
 
I don't think it's that unusual. Many cultures intermix their native written language with a popular foreign one.
True enough. Mostly I'm curious if the production info from the movie that LOAF has uncovered has any details on if they gave any thought to the symbols or if they were just made up by the artist.

I'm also struck though by the layout (I had noticed it before in the movie where the cross itself is layed on top of the map where the outline is) but the cross itself serves as a kind of compass point. I'm not sure if it's supposed to coincide with the galactic center or what but the map is layed out and degrees are marked in a circle around the cross. The concentric circles going out from the cross are marked at intervals of 100 (100, 200, 300, etc...). I also have no idea if this is somehow supposed to be linked to the Pilgrim's ability to navigate based on the electromagnetic forces and gravitational fields of the galaxy. In the movie itself there area also dotted jumplines overlaid on the map digitally that aren't present on this physical version

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Just as an aside, I was thinking earlier about WC being WW2 in space (pacific theater) and got to wondering what if anything the Pilgrims would be in that scenario. Of course not everything needs a direct analog, but basically what I came up with (but of course it's not a direct one to one comparison) were Nazis. If you think of pilgrims from the point of view of "how would a pacific theater battleship crew react if they found out once of their shipmate's parents were German and he was carrying around his grandpa's WW1 medals as good luck charms". Of course you also have the Pilgrims believing themselves to be genetically superior. And then on top of that, I was also reading the confed handbook tonight to see what it had to say about Pilgrim crosses and in Paladin's letter to tolwyn, he make the connection himself when talking about hte possibility of Pilgrims working with the Kilrathi saying something to the effect that the "Nazis and Japanese didn't have trouble finding eachother".
 
I'm also struck though by the layout (I had noticed it before in the movie where the cross itself is layed on top of the map where the outline is) but the cross itself serves as a kind of compass point. I'm not sure if it's supposed to coincide with the galactic center or what but the map is layed out and degrees are marked in a circle around the cross. The concentric circles going out from the cross are marked at intervals of 100 (100, 200, 300, etc...). I also have no idea if this is somehow supposed to be linked to the Pilgrim's ability to navigate based on the electromagnetic forces and gravitational fields of the galaxy. In the movie itself there area also dotted jumplines overlaid on the map digitally that aren't present on this physical version.
While I'd be rather surprised if this was actually the intention rather than a fortunate coincidence, but if you look at the layout of the map that came with WCP, it seems that the centre point here vaguely matches up with McDaniel's World on the other map. The match-up is obviously very vague, but seems kinda sufficient, considering that this map is a very different projection. Which is why I find the whole thing with constellations fascinating. For the Pilgrims, who didn't need to worry about drawing jump lines, but instead focussed on navigation by their own senses, I suppose it makes sense to indicate that if you're heading in this or that direction, you want to look out for this or that constellation.
 
I think I have the map in a pretty good state. I checked for broken lines and found and fix one in the lower right. I also filled in the missing edges and masked out a lot of blurry text where two or more photos overlapped. It really takes a while to go over the whole map at 100% zoom.


It's not perfect but it's not bad


If there aren't any glaring issues I'll call it finished for now. I could mess with it forever trying to get lines straighter and overlaps better and stuff like that. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. Or if you want the ~600 MB TIFF/~1 GB multi-layer TIFF for some reason.
 
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