Who Needs Graphics? (December 14, 2025)

[Bandit LOAF]

Here's a quick look at something most people don't think about: Wing Commander III's low graphics mode! That's right, if you set everything to low quality (even in SVGA as here) then you end up with a game that looks a lot more like X-Wing than Wing Commander! It's kind of a fun alternative to the textured version and the capital ships in particular look wonderful.





... and here's a quick comparison of Wing Commander Prophecy's three original graphics modes: 3dfx, Direct3D and software. Upgrading to a Voodoo card was certainly worth the money even for a broke high school student in 1997! I know the recent fan-led graphics update is spectacular but I'll always have a candle burning for that original look...




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Original update published on December 14, 2025

 

[MartySheen]

Very interesting. All these years and I never thought to try that in WC3. I agree, the Victory looks wonderful there. The textures in WC3 have not aged well especially if your playing with the blue background. My default way of playing WC3 these days is with the Direct Draw patch with the black background.

As for prophecy, I was messing around with the vanilla gog install some time ago. Id love to do an old school look play through soon but I remember having an issue with the mouse pointer getting stuck on the screen. Id like to eliminate the mouse problem but retain the old school look.

 

[Pedro]

I was stuck with something like the Matrox Mystique, all those D3D alignment issues and performance was bad enough I had to go down to software on the final mission anyway.