The game gets up and running fine, recognizes the joystick, and allows me to start missions with no problem. Without fail, however, the game crashes about 5-10 minutes into any mission. It exits the game and gives me a random cryptic error code (seems different every time) and a prompt box opens makes me close out the game.

I have tried all the different graphics settings in the game, turning 3D on and off, tried different Windows compatibility modes, display resolutions, etc., and nothing seems to make any difference. This has become extremely frustrating as I have been wanting to play this game again for a very long time and was excited that it was finally legitimately available again.

My basic PC specs are:

Acer R14 (R5-471T)
Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Intel Core i5-6200 w/ on board HD graphics 520
1080p touch screen display

If anyone has any idea how to make this work I would be extremely grateful. This is probably my favorite game of all time and I have been looking forward to playing it again. If you need any other info about my PC or anything else I'd be happy to answer. Thanks in advance for any help whatsoever, I'd be very grateful!

Did you try to contact the GOG support? They also do technical support: https://www.gog.com/support/star_wars_tie_fighter_1998

Sadly, I don't have any idea right now. :( by the way, you can't turn on 3D without modifying the game's EXE.

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate the advice even if you didn't know the specific answer. I finally got the 1998 version to (mostly) work by running it under XP SP3 compatibility mode, and by opening the file "TIESTART" in the game's home folder, going to advanced settings, and changing the 3D video card option. For some reason two options were popping up, even though my computer only has one. I changed the setting to "primary display driver", set all the in-game video and 3D settings to their highest levels, and that seemed to improve things significantly (though not perfectly).

The game still crashes randomly the same way I described above, but far less frequently. It is still hugely frustrating the occasional time it crashes right at the end of a tough mission, but it is a rare enough occurrence that it doesn't stop me from playing the game happily. I'd say it averages one crash for every 3 or so hours of game play. I honestly don't get it, but I'm happy just to be able to play this game because it truly is my favorite flight sim of all time. Finally made Emperor's Hand and embraced the dark side with glee.

One more quirk is that my trackpad/cursor doesn't work at all in the game (no pointer even appears), but the game responds to my touchscreen so it doesn't really matter.

https://www.gog.com/forum/star_wars_xwing_and_tie_fighter_series/missing_cursor