SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

How did the pseudo 3D effect work in oldschool games like wing commander. I know there was a bunch of sprites involved for the ships at every angle. Did it use real 3D math to calculate positions? was it actually a 3D engine but just using simple sprites as the objects?

Thanks for any info you guys might have :D

There is not a lot of technical detail I could find, but I know (as you said) the visuals are scaled sprites. and the depth would possibly be a simple 3d point system. where just the x,y,z was being calculated and the depth fed into the sprite size.

As a kid I always assumed it was a fake 3D effect but yeah I assume its actually using 3D math and then just displaying the correct sprite accordingly.
If anyone else knows any more information I would love to know as I was planning a retro space section for a game Im working on

Do you have any videos of this Wing Commander effect?

Quote from: iWasAdam on November 15, 2019, 12:05:34
There is not a lot of technical detail I could find, but I know (as you said) the visuals are scaled sprites. and the depth would possibly be a simple 3d point system. where just the x,y,z was being calculated and the depth fed into the sprite size.

Yeah, I agree with that. Some parts look like the sprites are skewed and / or rotated but the hardware couldn't do that ( Amiga version ).

[ off the top of my head ] - My guess would be take half of a sphere, use mathematically around 20 points to represent it, have a sprite for that point at it's angle and also at different orientations ( keeping it basic / limited to represent rather than accuracy ) and then do some funky math as to which sprite to display.