Wing Commander - The YF-44/F-44 Rapier 

I want Wing Comander 3 and 4 but just with updated current gen graphics :)

@@rockybeats8682 That would be cool.

Pfft, I would even want the first two, just polished a bit and with widescreen.

@@everythingsgonnabealright8888 that would be awesome as well.

@@travisbishop782 I may get flak for this, but if Squadron 42 ever comes out, it should be a Wing Commander-esque game.

My original comment from the last vid: Things learned during the making of this video: - The Rapier doesn't get called the Rapier II (or Rapier Mark 2) until WC2 according to the WCBible. Wish I bothered fact checking that before I was 5 minutes away from finishing the upload of this video last night. That's why I'm uploading on Sat. morning. - Normals>AutoSmooth is a miracle option for 3D faces that shade in weird ways. - Glow Maps are used for the Emissions setting in Blender. - Transparent Videos are a thing, but only if you encode in Quicktime. - Freespace Open actually does read the material settings of models brought into the game, at least to a certain degree. It makes things super glossy if you're not careful. - "Sun" Light is far better then point light for more dramatic lighting effects if angled properly in the 3D workspace when creating rendered images. - Blender has a love-hate relationship with DAE models it seems. Some faces on the model dont show up and need to be reconnected manually, or using MeshLab. The worst offender was the missing cockpit for the F-44G. I ended up just copying the cockpit canopy from the F-44C and modded it to fit on the G. - Freedom Flight was not just about the Firekkan campaign solely, it was also about a hostage rescue from Ghorah Khar.

Man, your diligence and integrity are exceptional. Great work.

Your WC content is so good, I don't mind watching it twice. Great job!

Holy cow! you remade it!!! :)

NICE to see a fellow Aussie Wingnut here!

The later references about the Rapier in the Nephilim War came from Star*Soldier, a digital pdf "magazine" that the developers of Wing Commander Arena had online (conveniently now found at the WCCIC). It had a bunch of timeline fluff and a paragraph for each Rapier variant in the game which I tried to incorporate. Now, I know Arena's gameplay isn't exactly well-regarded due to it's departure from the WC roots. But from what I can tell the community has embraced Star*Soldier as canon so I just rolled with it. As for the Rapiers in the Union...well, it seemed like a "weird" area canon-wise. The only canon info that I knew of about Union Rapiers came from the WC4 novel, which took a bunch of creative liberties that directly contradicted the game. Particularly the fighters used. So the only thing I felt comfortable saying was essentially "Yeah, the UBW had Rapiers", and just left it at that. Although in my own head canon the UBW had a bunch of WC1&2 ships, but they just weren't seen during the Black Lance incident.

@@MacsLore Ok, I will look it up on CIC. I had never played Arena as I never owned any gaming consoles!

Wow that's cool! I briefly tried to work with the original 3D files hosted on the CIC but I didn't get very far. Fortunately with Klav's models it wasn't really an issue, a little work and the results looked phenomenal.

@@MacsLore If you'd like, I can send you the Blender-files I have of the Privateer models.

I always had good luck with the Scimitar

Yes. Much preferred the Raptor

I wish. The only slight hope is that with the success of Star Was Squadrons, EA *may* consider going back to Wing Commander in the future.

@@MacsLore EA were the 1s WHO wrecked it in the 1st place! (Like everything ELSE they touched! ) SAME as Microsoft, whatever they bought out, turned to SHIT once they tinkered with it! If it aint broke...

@@MacsLore I also wish, but as long as EA has the Star Wars license, they have no real reason to return to Wing Commander, since Star Wars is a license to print money and Wing Commander nowadays is "What was that? Some game my dad/grandpa played back in the 90s?"

I don’t think you understand what “underrated” means, as it was one of the best selling space combat games ever.

Skill issue.

The movie lore about the Rapier is almost impossible to reconcile with that of the game.

How? The fact that the fighters in the game are Rapier IIs rather then Rapier Is means there had to be an older fighter model named Rapier. If memory serves the movie Rapier Is were originally produced around the same time as the Scimitars so them being retired slightly ahead of the Scimitar isn't that odd

Unfortuantely I'm not sure how much I could really say on it just by itself. But it might be covered along with the other TCN Fighters of WC3 in a future video.