Back in the day, Wing Commander was the undisputed king of PC gaming. Well, outside of Command & Conquer, and MechWarrior 2, and Myst, and SimCity... Y'know what? There were a lot of great games in the mid-'90s, but Wing Commander was special.
For starters, it wasn't just one game. It was a whole franchise that spanned a dozen games and expansions, along with an animated television series, a collectible card game, a novel series, and even a Hollywood-produced movie. And it even had big stars playing characters in the game thanks to the prodigious use of full-motion video.
For example, Mark Hammill plays the main character in Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom, a game so beloved by Wing Commander fans that it’s getting a fan-made remaster.
Simply titled "Wing Commander IV: Remastered," it uses the original game files and ports them to a brand new game engine. This greatly improves graphical fidelity with massively improved textures, internal cockpit view, and special effects (although the polycount still remains very low in-keeping with the simple aesthetic from the mid-'90s).
Additionally, AI-upscaled videos replace the original FMVs thanks to Owen Davies, who used Deep Learning AI to upscale the originals. Davies released the videos last October, which you can download separately here.
All the ship rooms will get upscaled as well so the characters won't appear either tiny or blocky during the important conversation scenes, and there will even be some added content from the PlayStation version that was cut from the original PC release.
It's noted on ResetEra that the mod will require the original game files, so you'll need to own the game either on GOG or Origin for it to work. This is likely to encourage support for the franchise. There’s no release date yet, but a demo will be releasing soon that will be completely standalone.