Most Iconic WC Fighter

The Sabre was probably stretching the hardware of WC2 era, but WC3 was running on more powerful computers --or not running at all. Also, the Thunderbolt and the Kilrathi asteroid ship probably put the same strain on the engine. Granted, the other Confed and Kilrathi ships are made of straight lines.
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The original Wing Commander I engine was special because it displayed ships as a collection of individual, pre-rendered sprites instead of as 3D meshes. That let the artists display ships that seemed impossible in 1990… because instead of having the game creating them on the fly, it was choosing from a collection of images and then adjusting that image to your view. Origin could render those images on high end hardware (which might take hours or days at the time) and it was all set–like baking a cake instead of shipping a box of ingredients. So at a time when games struggled to render simple wireframe shapes, Wing Commander I looked impossibly good.

Wing Commander III's engine works more like most any modern game: it renders a multi-faceted mesh of shapes and then attaches a stored texture over them to add details. Origin premiered this system with Strike Commander and their artists were the ones that taught the industry how to do it (courtesy of the late, great Paul Steed). What this method meant was that you could render a relatively simple shape (say a set of rectangles) and then use textures to up the detail and make it look like an F-16.

The claim for years was that the shift in art style in Wing Commander III 'must' have been because of the shift between these two systems. But that's just not the case: Origin's artists could do an excellent 'rond' ship in the engine (the Arrow has more curves than a Sabre!). Wing Commander III avoids that style of ship because it had a dedicated art style and not because it was impossible… look at the Wraith, a totally round ship that effortlessly makes the jump from prerendered sprite in Academy to realspace object in Armada. The only reason it's not in WC3 is because Chris Roberts didn't want it there.
 
Here is a high-res image of the F-16 from the Strike Commander libRealSpace object. As you can see, it handles the model perfectly fine, and it's no more complex than the Sabre. I am absolutely sure that the engine could have handled it.

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One noticeable difference from later models is that the wings are a flat double-sided plane with no depth to it. This works fine for the most part in the game, and many other later games did the same. I do wonder if there was some dissatisfaction with that (if you view the model head-on the wings disappear) which led to the visibly heavier aesthetic of the fighters in III. Basically, turning the engine limitations (low poly count) into a deliberate design choice and an asset.

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Also worth remembering that the Wing Commander community in 1996 blamed the change in engine for absolutely everything. Remember they were certain the Concorrdia wasn't in Wing Commander IV because the game couldn't display the model? There was absolutely no basis for any of this other than 'the engine exists and I can notice it' :D
 
All the model comparisons have been to Strike Commander, but there's actually a much more relevant one: Wing Commander III itself.

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I remember when this topic came up before there was some speculation as to whether or not the Realspace engine could handle some of the more complicated shapes due to engine eccentricities regarding model rendering. Well, the Dralthi and Vaktoth are complex shapes with visible wings, moreso than any Confed fighter in earlier games, so I'm not sure that's correct.

The Shok'lar from Armada, modeled on the Salthi:

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Bandit LOAF said:
Also worth remembering that the Wing Commander community in 1996 blamed the change in engine for absolutely everything. Remember they were certain the Concorrdia wasn't in Wing Commander IV because the game couldn't display the model? There was absolutely no basis for any of this other than 'the engine exists and I can notice it' :D
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This is one that I wonder about, since the Concordia at least had features that weren't used in other ships: two flight bays and a closed central hangar. But then with Wing Commander IV already with a huge budget and tiny schedule it seems more likely that the official story is true: that it was cut for production reasons and it wasn't deemed worth the effort to create two entirely new models, whether or not the engine could handle it.

The novel also mentions the Vesuvius having two flight bays; was that something in the concepts or invented by Ben Ohlander?


With all the recent work on emulating Realspace it'd be great if we could try recreating the models for use in the engine, just to finally settle what it could do or not. To be honest this kind of remake is the sort I'd be really interested in, and it'd probably attract a lot of interest from the mid-90s retro 3D revival.
 
This is one that I wonder about, since the Concordia at least had features that weren't used in other ships: two flight bays and a closed central hangar. But then with Wing Commander IV already with a huge budget and tiny schedule it seems more likely that the official story is true: that it was cut for production reasons and it wasn't deemed worth the effort to create two entirely new models, whether or not the engine could handle it.

The novel also mentions the Vesuvius having two flight bays; was that something in the concepts or invented by Ben Ohlander?
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Yes, the blocker was not anything with the game engine but the fact that the Lexington's design needed to be locked down earlier than most ships in oder to design and build the sets. They'd settled on a reuse of the Victory before the first batch of storyboards were delivered in February '95.

(Wing Commander III has ships with similar interiors. The dreadnaught has a hallway that leads to an engine room, the Kilrathi depot has multiple paths to a central power core room, the Behemoth and Blackmane similar. And the landing/takeoff stuff for a 'closed' bay is there for the supply depots at the end.)
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Yes, the blocker was not anything with the game engine but the fact that the Lexington's design needed to be locked down earlier than most ships in oder to design and build the sets. They'd settled on a reuse of the Victory before the first batch of storyboards were delivered in February '95.
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That's interesting, I wouldn't have guessed that because the interiors don't really follow the exterior shape that closely. The part that does is the hangar but wouldn't that have been green screen?
 
That is what always bothered me , the Art style change is understandable , but it was never really explained -in universe-.
When I was young I Played Wing Commander 1 in Amiga500 and then Wing Commander III and IV , I totally skipped WC2 .

I first played WC2 in Kilrathi Saga and I was so ecxited ! I was reading the manual and there was a ship chart .
In wing commander 1 it was "2654 edition" or something and then there was wc2 and wc3 with only 1 year difference .

It bothered me so much that 23 years ago I registered here and started my first thread about it :P
 
Actually I had quite the opposite feeling. WC1 felt like a game with an aesthetic well ahead of its time, whereas WC2 to me is a film based on comics.
 
TCSTigersClaw said:
That is what always bothered me , the Art style change is understandable , but it was never really explained -in universe-.
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I think this is why there's so much speculation about it: other than the Concordia in the intro, they're never seen again. The Thunderbolt and Excalibur appeared in Secret Ops a year after Prophecy, meanwhile the Rapier and Broadsword don't appear anywhere again until 2007. The Wing Commander IV novel probably contributed to the confusion because they're mentioned a lot in that: they're the entire fighter force of the Border Worlds and are constantly described as being outdated. (I think there is a reference to them using an "early-model" Arrow paralleling the cameo in Academy, which suggests that it isn't so clear-cut).
 
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