Thanks for your feedback - I haven't yet checked out Oolite myself :)

BTW, I'm wondering how well the older instalments in the Star Wraith series of games (which had been released as freeware) would act as an alternative for the Wing Commander titles?

I was ready to try out Oolite but... I need XP SP3?

Why do so many games lately completely drop support for XP SP2 and lower? I take it has to do with the fact that they also dropped support from Windows 2000 and lower at the same time but isn't it weird that a game support XP SPwhatever but not XP itself?

That's pretty stupid to me.

I guess you have Microsoft to thank for that one. Earlier XP versions without the SP's were so unstable and full of problems that using them was impractical. Even then, I am not sure something that runs on SP3 wouldn't run on SP2, though.

...

I'm running XP SP1 as we speak. I can count on one hand the number of times I had to reboot it and it wasn't due to some crappy third party programs. I've been using it for 10 years now.

Yes, SP1 was stable, if I remember correctly. The SP-less version were the unstable ones. I use SP2 here, and haven't had problems in a long time also. SP2 & 3 were mostly related to security, I think something that runs in SP3 should run in SP2 also, probably even in SP1.

I wish that were true. I recently wanted to upgrade my Firefox version since the one I use is not supported anymore and many sites started to fail to function because of it...

Learned the hard way that the version I'm using is the latest stable version still guaranteed to work under Windows XP SP1.

Things like this baffle me. It was working A1 before. Now it doesn't. It's like I've been using electricity all my life but suddenly someone come in, play with the electrical box and declare that my old appliances won't work anymore even though it is exactly the same current. Doesn't add up.

Last I checked the old Star Wraith games, they were quite lackluster. But for a free WC, why not just play Wing Commander Darkest Dawn? It's insanely faithful to the franchise, using the FS2Open engine, FMV briefing, intros, chatty characters.. it's very good, and free for all.

Funniest thing about the XP SP issue is that the Service Packs are a collection of previous patches, so if you had, say, SP2 and installed selected patches (because you don't need the other), it's almost like having SP3 (in terms of security etc.), but the programs are dumb to say that your system is not-up-to-date.

I also hate this "won't work in previous versions" stuff - and it's not only about games as Eagle of Fire noted. I'm quite certain most (or at least a considerable amount of) programmes that refuse to work or even install upon finding an outdated OS version would actually function, perhaps less stable. I know Win98 has serious differences from XP in terms of functioning, but all those service packs? Do they really affect core functionality so that newer programmes just won't run on older versions?

The thing is that I'm trying to list games that are actually different yet similar enough to act as alternatives. I know about the Wing Commander Saga but it's more of a fanmade sequel/remake than anything. I'm not decided on projects like that yet, but let's say for now they're not in the main focus. Thanks for bringing this up anyway :)

I sure would love to try out some kind of "emulation" of SP3 if any of you have any clue if it does exist.

It might be just as stupid as to edit some text files so the system think I'm running SP3.