As I have the CD version running in Windows 7 with 3D Acceleration enabled (both X-Wing and TIE Fighter) I can do get some logs for you once I'm home (next week) if you like?

Windows 8 at the moment I couldn't get it working from due to 16 bit colour supported being removed, but as I can access it from Windows 8 at some point I would be able to compare the results?

Also if you get this working you will have fixed 2 of my favourite space games! I've used your Wing Commander patch for ages.

Then I just need someone to emulate 8 bit palettized textures for StarLancer ;)

That saved me quite bit of unnecessary work, thanks for noting it. I tried making a similar compatibility set for a renamed tie95.exe, but that one won't work; in order to work, it appears the GameUX compatibility setting has to be set as well, and there does not seem to be any way of doing that with the compatibility administrator (the system compatibility library lists that for tie95.exe, though). Sigh.

Managed to modify the gog-compatiblity settings to remove the alt-tab so I can work on making alt-tabbing work well.

Personally, I care more about being able to alt-tab from a game than the 3d acceleration =). The version in git now has relatively nice alt-tabbing support (requires change in the compatibility settings though).

EDIT: ..which naturally doesn't work in the ingame portion. Sigh.
EDIT: ..and a workaround I had to add apparently makes the game framerate rather choppy. Sigh #2.

just saying, i can confirm that 3D acceleration works when the exe-file is replaced

http://www.gog.com/forum/star_wars_tie_fighter_special_edition/reintregrating_3dacceleration_kind_of

nice working alt-tab would be awesome, makes backing up your pilot so much easier

Mr smart guy, I go to answer you with your own thread.
http://www.gog.com/forum/star_wars_tie_fighter_special_edition/reintregrating_3dacceleration_kind_of
Now tell me if I lie when I say how the GOG game is a fraud or how you can not play with modern graphic cards with the old TIE95.

I go to tell one feature, you have not told at your thread. Most of the people with modern computers will not listen the music with a cd because most of them will use SATA dvd writers and they can not reproduce music from a cd.

In fact I do not understand your answer when even you have told how you played the game with 3D acceleration and a intel graphics card.

At the end, the guide about how play with the 3D is great, I do not go to discuss it but the point here is how the game sold by GOG is too expensive and a fraud. You can make more with the older version. About because the newer graphics cards will not run, it is simple, there is at least one feature from old graphics which you will not find in new graphic cards, the z-buffer.

Pds: Before you answer trying insult to people with words as "smart guy", remember how nobody will respect you with this type of words.

first:

as i wrote, the redbook audiotracks (inflight music) are not coming from the cd i created, but still from the track*.ogg files inside the music-folder on the hard disk.

all the other audiostuff is *.wav and works just fine from the cd. no redbook-audio.

so everyone will hear the music.

second:

it might work with intel chips, but it just doesnt with newer nvidias or amds. its driver related as support for older
directx versions was dropped some time ago (afaik)
your "gog is so stupid, even I can get 3D working on my intel chip"-attitude doesnt help here.

but you're kind of right, they could at least provide an exe-file with 3D enabled. if it doesnt work, the game
falls back to softwaremode anyway

As a little update, still hacking on it.. got the alt-tabbing to work a bit more robustly, but the ingame seems to fight alt-tabbing a lot so unless I hit it with some kind of reflection library I doubt it can be done.

As for 3d, I've been implementing wrappers for various interfaces and oh boy is the ancient direct3d (the original one!) convoluted. I wouldn't hold my breath on whether I can get it hacked together; currently I get a hang and don't know what's causing it.

Funny little things; the game creates ddraw2 object only to do a single call (to query available video memory) and then destroys it. Everything else is ddraw1. And even the "3d" mode seems to draw the cockpit and its instruments with 2d calls. (I'm currently doing no-operation on all 3d things, but I can still see the cockpit..)

The game also requests 640x480x8 for the 3d mode, which is odd. It's possible that it's misbehaving due to some wrong information I'm feeding it.

Anyhoo.

Long shot, but could be slightly related.
On steam forums people were having a similar issue with Syberia. The game was unable to detect the 3d card until it was forced to run in 8 bit mode (run in 256 colors in Compatibility tab)
See https://steamcommunity.com/app/46500/discussions/0/43099722304873674/?insideModal=1 for e.g (there are similar topics if you search)

Of course, I tried to force TIESTART.EXE and TIE95.EXE in 8 bit without success...

Well, the textures tie95 requests are 16bit (I give a few options, including 8bit paletted). *shrug*.

Got my hands on directx3 sdk (which is the version tie fighter used most likely), and it's been a rather fun read. Gems such as triangle strips that are assumed to be less than 30 triangles long, or this fun bit about the future of OpenGL: .. anyway, the docs should shed some light on the proper use of the ancient d3d. We'll see if it helps.

I'm seeing 3d calls being made, so that's definitely not the case.. I don't know what they might have done that causes the game to fall back on 2d mode when not using my wrapper.

Keep at it! Gog, has a long history of adding community patches to fix their titles. The more info you find the better we all are to solving this problem.

no idea how he did this, but this one is strong in the force, post number 7

http://www.gog.com/forum/star_wars_tie_fighter_special_edition/reintregrating_3dacceleration_kind_of/post7

all hail gerwin79

As for the two executables - the "music fix" executable some people have used to get 3d working versus gog's version: they have different sizes, gog's version being exactly 500 bytes shorter. The 500 bytes in the "music fix" version look like random noise, but dumpbin says it's a section called ".music", so I suppose it's important for that version =)

Apart from that extra bit, less than 400 bytes differ, about 100 of which are changed data, rest is changed code. The changes in data appear to be differences in some paths, but the changes are not all too clear. A string in the music fix version says "d:\VOICE\" and the same string appears to be "D\VOICE\" in the gog version. (why not just "VOICE\" ?) The music fix version appears to have a few more strings than the gog version, probably related to the "missing music".

The code changes consist of 23 different chunks of changed data, some of which appear to be simple "paint over code with NOP instructions" changes, but most seem to be more complicated changes. Which of the changes are related to the music fix (which apparently wasn't trivial, with the added data segment and all), and which are related to the cd check and/or 3d accleration changes is a good question.. both executables appear to be from the same original source since majority of the offsets match.
Ha, hats off to him, I apparently just wasted a lot of time =)