What I am going to say now is just wishful thinking and daydreaming.
But what about if in the future we would remake the concourse fully in 3D?
Just like the Base works in XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The base is not more than a fancy menu, and still it reminded me a lot to X-Wing concourse: different rooms, characters moving and talking in them, different music and ambient sound in each of them.
Even the travelling sequences we could make using the 3D engine that we use for the flight sim. Certainly it would be less work than re-creating them in HD by rendering them with in 3D Studio or Blender. And they would adapt to the same standard monitor resolution the flight sim uses, instead of jumping from 200p to 1080p between the concourse and the flight sim.

I was thinking about a 3D concourse as well, although still keeping a relatively fixed camera position that mimics the original look, but adding subtle pans and dollys to the shots. And with the position staying relatively fixed, we could add characters (like the guards at the login desk) as actors filmed in front of a greenscreen.

Fun fact: While the music thing is just a hobby of mine, I'm actually a professional 3D artist. But as it is with 3D, it's always very time consuming as well, plus I've never done stuff for realtime use. I think what I'm trying to say is, I could probably help out in that area as well, although I doubt I will have time for it ;)

Yes. Fixed camera with pans between the different areas, keeping the same POV as the 2D concourses.
It's not just for nothing. The thing is that the user can change the resolution of the 3D engine to match his hardware. So it makes sense that the whole game adapts to that resolution and aspect ratio.
The 2D sprites in X-Wing are fix to 320x200 resolution and 4:3 aspect ratio. In XW95 they are 640x480, but I think they look hideous and cheaply put together. Ackbar and Dodonna look blurry and out of place. The different stances empty and cold. And what were they thinking on when they chose the Times New Roman font for the UI? It does feel like they took the first choice in the list without thinking much on it.
Anyway, back on topic, if we want to keep the concourse graphics at the same dynamic resolution than the rest of the game, we have three choices: upscaling, vector graphics, 3D graphics.
- Upscaling is horrible. No need to explain further.
- Vector graphics could be a possibility, but I think it would make everything look like a Flash game.
- 3D graphics allow for reconstructing the 2D scene in 3D, and let the camera have whatever aspect ratio the user needs. It wouldn't even mater much if the polycount is low. We aren't making here an 2014 AAA game. Just a remake of X-Wing. I wouldn't even mind if we used exactly the same original art to texturize the polygons.

I am not sure about real actors. I think a couple of 3D animated models for Ackbar and Dodonna, and then one generic pilot model for the hangars and take of/landing sequences would be enough. There should be several free droid models all over the place. I think we could even use the droid models from XWAU.
Also, it's easier to lipsynch the 3D model animations than having to record different film sequences for every single line spoken in the voiceovers.

In a more realistic second thought, but keeping with the idea of remaking the concourses in 3D to allow for different resolutions and aspect ratios, what if we just mimic the architecture of the different screens but in 3D as simply as we can to keep with the 1990s look, and even use the guard, Dodonna and Ackbar and other character sprites animations as animated bilboards in the 3D room?
It would look a little bit like Doom, but only when the camera is panning from or towards a different room.
As you say, 3D stuff is very time consuming, and it is really easy for us to aim too high and end with something that looks too amateurish.
If instead, we artificially lower the "ceiling" art style to keep a retro look, it increases the chances of us to make something acceptable within the limited constraints.

Whatever you guys think will be best. It will be cool to see X-wing concourse in 3D.

So far, remember that is just wishful thinking and daydreaming. We are going for the original art assets currently. 2D Animations and all of that. :)

I have something which might be useful for XWVM:
Two years ago, a member of the XWA-Upgrade forum, Reizomonje, found out how portraits are assigned for each pilot:
http://www.xwaupgrade.com/phpBB3008/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=10859

Also, I figured something out about the historical mission selection screen:
There are some notes inside its MIDI-file which only play when we see the TIE Fighter, the TIE Interceptor or the TIE Bomber (and their stats) on screen

Thanks for the hints!
About the pilot portrait, should we keep it like in X-Wing, that they are chosen following that algorithm, or should we instead let the player choose one from the available portraits?

Yup. Question: Does the Assault Gunboat show up there too when you get far enough in the campaign? From my investigating it looks like there actually 4 conditional instruments for that part, but I only hear the three, for the TIEs.

Those and the different instruments playing depending on which concourse door is open seem to be the only conditional tracks in the concourse.

As for which portrait, I'd say allowing to choose.

With my testing pilot, I completed TOD 1, 2, 3 and am halfways thru 4 and 5, and no gutboat appears on the Historical Missions animations.
Are there tracks also like these for the rebel ships in the Training Room? I don't think the B-Wing appears there either.

I find quite amazing the attention to the detail put into this by the musician. How many people had noticed that some subtle track was played only for the few seconds that each of those TIE appear on screen? Incredible. It is rare today to see so much care and polish put on a game's soundtrack.

The Gunboat and the TIE Advanced don't show up on the historical mission screen. The latter also doesn't show up in the tech room.

The B-Wing does show up on the training mission screen in the Win95 version of X-Wing, but not in the MS-DOS versions.

I don't know if there are any special tracks played on the training mission screen, yet.

According to my looking at the MIDI files, there are no instrument enable/disable hook commands in the Training Mission screen music. Just in the Historical Mission and main concourse screens.

Also, I just read all the stuff about 3D concourses: It would sure be neat, but it would be a massive undertaking. Not just in the assets department, but the engine too! To look convincing, it would need a lot more complex lighting and shaders than the basic vanilla-like flight engine has, and also animation systems that the flight engine simply won't have at all.

It won't be impossible, but yeah, I'd say focusing on 2D for now would be best. Even FS2_Open hasn't implemented 3D concourses yet.

On hitboxes and hardpoints.
Not long ago I remember seeing somewhere where the different gun emplacements and hitboxes were defined for the different ships in X-Wing. However, I cannot find that information again, or if it was possible to inspect it using some program.

I can read in different forums discussions about how "off" or inadequate were the hitboxes for the earlier games. But none of them seem to give any particular sources for that.
It seems, at least to me, that figthers have a pretty rough hitbox to ease dogfighting. It would definitely be much harder to hit a TIE Fighter or a B-Wing from behind if they would be realistic.
The hitboxes for the bigger ships seem to match their model, if I am not mistaken? Can anyone confirm this?

What about docking points? Are they defined at particular places or you think the game just uses a generic contact point on top or below each ship?

About hangars, some ships have clearly some hangars sculpted in their models in X-Wing (cruiser, destroyer, frigate), but most others have not, and still many missions use them as mothership for fighters and transports. Should they use some generic exit/entrance point for all of them, or you think they are defined for each?

Yes, most smaller craft do indeed seem to have a rather rought hitbox. I'll need to check out the capships to be sure, but I think their hitbox isn't as rought as the smaller craft.

I think I will go for a single box hitbox for starfighters, as tall, wide and long as the starfighter, but quite squarish. At least for now.
Even when it's not realistic, I think it's quite close to what X-Wing uses and otherwise it could be quite a pain to hit anything on an X-Wing or TIE Interceptor with so spread out shooting layout.

Later on we can add an option to use rough or tight hitboxes for extra difficulty.