News Collection: On This Day in WC News

2025.010 (January 10, 2025)

Reminder: #Wingnut Movie Night Tonight!

This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is a fun one: The Fifth Element, a movie that shares a cinematographer with Wing Commander! You can find details on that as well as how to watch along with us in the announcement post here.

After Action Report: Das Boot

Greetings WingNuts, We are back from our long sea tour! After two weeks, the Wing Commander movie club has watched the director's cut of Das Boot. Most in attendance had seen at least the theatrical version before so we had a good idea what we were getting into… but it was certainly a tough watch! Unlike some of the war films we've watched in this series, Das Boot's impact has not diminished over the years.

2024.010 (January 10, 2024)

Neat Trick Allows Avenger to Carry Five Mace Missiles

LOAF has been doing some intense research of peculiar quirks and rare occurrences built into Wing Commander 4. He's discovering that there are a number of exotic things you can trigger by taking very specific actions. For example, if you fly the mission in the Speradon System to capture the carrier, you get Mace Missiles. Then, if you let Catscratch die, Pliers will offer you an upgraded Avenger.

2023.010 (January 10, 2023)

Enhanced Hellcat Renders Ready to Move

Nightball06 has a new set of Hellcat renders to share, and they've certainly come a very long way since his original 2D sketches. He tried commissioning another artist to take his designs to the next dimension, but now he's learned techniques to work with the model himself. There are a few liberties taken with specific elements, but the overarching space frame is pretty sharp. The textures are slick too.

2022.010 (January 10, 2022)

Vintage Russian Show Highlights WC Series

We've had a number of non-English language vids in the news lately... and here's another one! But in the various translation methods aren't quite your style, this one has been helpfully translated in real time by native Russian speaker enilenis. Seeing WC on vintage television programs was always a rarity, and catching an international show was even harder, so we're really lucky that opportunities like this exist!

2021.010 (January 10, 2021)

Secret Ops Trailers Converted from Flash & Upscaled to 4K

Here's a treat! People tend to think of Wing Commander Secret Ops as a game without FMV and a story told via text, but there were actually wonderful flashes of "video" throughout. Every chapter had some nifty in-engine cutscenes, and there were also a couple of really cool teaser trailers posted to the web. The first teaser revs up Prophecy's ICIS interface.

2020.010 (January 10, 2020)

Absolute Territory Looking for Pilots & Mission Builders

centaurianmudpig has announced that his WC-style space sim Absolute Territory is now taking beta signups. More than just flying around in space, the testing here also involves creating your own missions via a neat custom interface. If you'd like to get in early and help positively influence a fellow Wing Commander fan's work, head over to the CIC Forums here. Interested in joining the Closed Beta?

2019.010 (January 10, 2019)

WC vs History: Deep Diving the Broadsword

Last year I tweeted a long thread about the Lightning jets used to build the Rapiers for the Wing Commander movie. I spent last night researching the BOMBER used in the film! Like the Rapiers played by English Electric Lightning interceptors, the Broadsword bomber in the Wing Commander movie was also a real aircraft. The cockpit is from a scrapped RAF English Electric Canberra B 2 bomber!

2018.010 (January 10, 2018)

Catch Up On Everything Wing Commander Amiga

Shot97 has put together an absolutely massive review of Wing Commander for Amiga systems. He covers every inch from top to bottom. Shot goes over what the game meant to him and then proceeds to cover the backstory, the impact of the characters, the depth of the manual, the significance of the Kilrathi, and that's just getting started. Everything is accompanied by relevant video/screenshots and commentary.

2017.010 (January 10, 2017)

Condor Now Ready to Resupply

DefianceIndustries' latest ship might look like the familiar Search and Rescue ship he completed last month, but this is actually the tanker/refueler version. It has a slightly different model to account for the docking port that transfers munitions and fuel. Although it won't see action in the Secret Ops MUP due to its sole appearance in Prophecy, this bodes well for our chances of seeing the enhancement pack make the leap over to its Vision Engine sibling after the current upgrade is complete. You can learn more about the project and try out the first alpha release here!

2016.010 (January 10, 2016)

International Option Added & Samples Posted For WC Album

Origin composer George Oldziey has added a new Paypal option for fans who didn't get a chance to secure their copy of the reorchestrated Wing Commander album during the original crowdfunding campaign. This allows Wingnuts based outside the US to donate and receive it either digitally or in physical form. Find all the details at Mr. Oldziey's website.

2015.010 (January 10, 2015)

Smudo Talks Wing Commander

Here's something from 2012 that we've only now come across. German Hip Hop artist Smudo (Die Fantastischen Vier / Fanta 4) was a speaker at the 2012 edition of LARA, a local awards event for videogames. Golem.de has some two minutes of footage in which the artist discusses his connection to Wing Commander.

SpaceX Lands Rocket on Drone Ship

News sites around the world are carrying a story about SpaceX's launch today, and the big ones are almost all negative. "SpaceX Stumbles," "Booster Fails" and "Lands with a Crash" are what you'd see if you just skimmed the major outlets. Yikes, huh? It's all a matter of perspective, however.

2014.010 (January 10, 2014)

It's a Real Life MIP!

SpiritPlumber spotted a neat article with some familiar looking hardware. Apparently in the late '90s, a UK firm developed a person-carrying enclosure that attaches to the weapon hard point of a small helicopter or jet. The "Exint" pods were designed to insert special forces soldiers or extract wounded troops. Although the idea might lead someone to assume a few British engineers were just big fans of Wing Commander 4's Manned Insertion Pods, it apparently goes as far back as WW2.

2013.010 (January 10, 2013)

Guards, You Are Dismissed...

Michelle D has created a Kilrathi guard sketch and model inspired by the Emperor's protectors in the Wing Commander II demo. They're quite faithful representations of the ceremonial armor! A simple animation of the model has been posted to YouTube here, and Wingnuts who are not familiar with the alternate version of the WC2 intro where these are highlighted definitely need to check it out. "I granted the title of Slave Lord of Terra to you, not to your scientists!

2012.010 (January 10, 2012)

Dorkir Gets the Right Shape

Here's a preview of CMDBob's newest model, a Kilrathi Dorkir transport. The ship has really great geometry, but it still needs textures. That's nothing a little brown and red can't fix!

New Classic Cartridge Player Coming Soon

Here's a new way to play your Super Nintendo Wing Commander games. The latest iteration of the Retrode device allows SNES and Genesis games to play on your PC via the adapter pictured below. There's a bit of work necessary to get everything going: players must install an emulator and supply their own controllers, but connection and compatibility with computers looks pretty easy after that. Now all we need is WC2 SNES!

2011.010 (January 10, 2011)

Paper Drayman Kicks Off New Year

Paper Commander's first model of 2011 has been released! The classic WC1 Drayman is ready to download, print and build here. It looks great, and if you've never built a paper model before, Péricles says this is the one to start with. My friends!

It's Raining Draymen

For those who saw the paper Drayman above and can't get enough of the storied 'sport, here's a look back at one of Howard Day's impressive 3D models. It was released in 2005 and require F-edge and Max6 to manipulate. The ship is available to download here (2.5 meg zip).

2010.010 (January 10, 2010)

Paper Gratha Ready to Fly (on Blocks)

RapierDragon has finished his paper Gratha! The finished structure didn't sit very well on the ground, so the last shot below adds some landing struts to give the fighter a better angle. Printable files for your own construction should be available shortly. RapierD is moving on to a Firekkan-inspired design next.

Heresey War Developers Interviewed

Space Sim Central has posted a new Q&A session with the developers of Heresy War, a space sim by Dream Builder Studios. The game features impressive visuals, a branching plot, customizable ships and will center around a human civil war beginning in space. A multiplayer demo is in work, and the game is expected for release in 2010. SSC: Heresy War's gameplay is centered around a branching story line of missions.

2009.010 (January 10, 2009)

IRC Conference Reminder

Here's a reminder about the IRC conference this weekend concerning the WCPedia Project. The event begins online in #Wingnut at 7 pm Eastern US time on Sunday, January 11, 2009. Newcomers can connect to the discussion easily via the Java Client. There should be a great conversation on organization, layout, writing styles, a working timeframe and much more.

And Play Armada Online!

In addition to all the scholarly discussion, fans will also be taking advantage of the crowd in #Wingnut to set up some Wing Commander Armada games. wcnut helped put together these instructions for people who've never played Armada online. Details on how to get Armada running on modern computers are also available in the CIC's Tech Support section. Download and install DOSBox 0.

2008.010 (January 10, 2008)

Flight Commander Communications Patch Released

eddieb has released a small communications bug fix patch for the latest version of Flight Commander. Most players won't need it, but the update resolves a crash that can occur when comm transmissions are sent during low detail mode. This should help a subset Perfect Plan fans. Wingnuts with neither Flight Commander nor the Perfect Plan mod should check out Eddie's flexible Wing Commander engine.

The Art of Wing Commander Arena - Part Fifty-Two

A bar, in Wing Commander? Actually, this made it into the finished game - as one of the background loading screens. It was originally going to be the 'medal room' - awards earned in the game would appear here. Check out the Kilrathi character models - amazing!

2007.010 (January 10, 2007)

Presenting The Coolest Present

Marc, the creator of our wonderful 2006 Christmas Tree, got an awesome gift of his own over the holidays. Ironduke wanted to show his appreciation for all the beautiful retextured ships that Marc's made available lately, so he used one of the designs to personalize a shirt. I love creative stuff like that. Duke (and his fiance) did a great job!

Open Source Media Player Gets WC Support

The FFmpeg project is an open source system being produced to play and record various video formats. Among other game related video formats such as those used by Westwood games, the program will also play back movie files as used by WC3, and possibly also WC4. It is a function performed very well already by HCl's movie player, but it's nice to see this kind of support from outside the WC community. If you'd like to try FFmpeg, the program will run on both Windows and Linux, you can download the source code from here.

2006.010 (January 10, 2006)

Numbers Don't Win A Battle

Major Striker has created a neat scene involving his Raptor and Krant. A trio of Confederation fighters are cruising through a desolate region of space when their routine patrol turns dangerous. It's probably not Khajja the Fang flying that Krant, since he never liked bad odds. You can grab the 11 meg .

EA Trademarks New System Shock Title

GameSpot has discovered that Electronic Arts recently trademarked the name "System Shock" for potential use in a new game. The popular and highly rated original was developed by Looking Glass and published under the Origin brand in 1994. It utilized the Ultima Underworld engine to tell a gripping story in an impressive 3D environment, but sales were average. EA hasn't touched the series since producing System Shock 2 in 1999.

2005.010 (January 10, 2005)

Cyberion Opens Origin Memorial

It's already been a busy year for Cyberion, and we're only ten days into it! His latest project is a tribute to the many games that Origin has made over the years. We're all familiar with the Wing Commanders, Ultimas and Crusaders, but Cyberion's memorial lists everything from 2400 AD to Wings of Glory. There's also a little bit about the major project developers that worked for the company over the years.

Now Deciding Privateer Remake Package Sizes

The Privateer Remake Team is trying to determine what size packages would best suit people interested in the upcoming fan project. They've taken some liberties with the scope of the game, beefed up the graphics and recorded new audio, so the release will be slightly bigger than the original. They have come up with four release scenarios ranging from 80 megs to 165 megs of required materials. You can let the team know whether you prefer to download individual components or get the release as one intact package.

2004.010 (January 10, 2004)

Solsector.net Welcomes Battle Stations

A few days ago we updated about a new fan made WC arcade shooter which is being worked on by Daniel Brito. Now the project has its own website, based on the CIC's own Sol Sector hosting service. The site is still in early stages, but you can expect it to grow as the project progresses. You can view the WCBS site here.

New Space Initiative Appears Imminent

A number of sites are reporting rumors that President Bush will be kicking off a new US space initiative within the next few days. I'm actually quite surprised at the number of sources carrying the story, especially since none of the details are yet announced. Most prominent among the rumors are a new reusable space vehicle, returning to the moon, a manned moon base and a human Mars mission. It sounds ambitious, but if that sort of talk gets you excited, you might want to pay attention to the news around Wednesday.

2002.010 (January 10, 2002)

WCA Art 9: I'll Be Brief

More Wing Commander Academy artwork. Here's the original painting and the final version of the Tiger's Claw's cadet briefing room... seen throughout the series, starting with the second episode.

Weasel On XP

The man named most likely to have his name on a shirt is at it again -- #WingNut regular WildWeasel has written an exhaustive report on his tests of Wing Commander games under Windows XP... and here it is! Because, you know...Wing Commander in Windows XPWhen I considered switching to Windows XP Professional, the first question that came to mind was, naturally, whether or not the various Wing Commander games would work on it.

2001.010 (January 10, 2001)

Contest Over

The Lancers Reactor has announced the winners of their Capital Ship Contest -- the TCS Cerberus conversion was second place in its respective catagory. Congrats!

Correction

Rylex asks that I post the following correction regarding my last report on Final Conflict : "I used NO plugins for the engines - everything was done with "normal" 3D-Studio Max tools. NO PLUGINS WERE USED !!! What I still want to tell you is that there are still some problems regarding the range-mode of the engines. If you look at the engines from a far distance - then it will not look that great...

1999.010 (January 10, 1999)

Eight Is Great

Brand new Week Eight Trivia Questions are now available. The Scoreboard is now divided into a Senior and Junior Squadron. Now all you have to worry about is competing within your own tier (approximately twenty-five people of your skill level). New squadrons will be added as the number of players increase.

He's Soooo Dreamy

Hey, it's a promotional picture of Freddie Prinze Jr. that I found while going through some really old movie articles... don't you wish YOU had that shirt?