Flight Commander is a space combat game in the style of Wing Commander. The Flight Commander engine was programmed from the ground up, and comes with a graphical mission editor. It is designed to accomodate easy modding, using standard formats for images, sounds, and 3d graphics. All game stats can be changed easily with a text editor.

For the more advanced missions, scripting is done with the user-friendly but powerful lua scripting language. All scripting commands are well documented, and many examples are included for a variety of missions.

Graphics

• Hardware-accelerated 3d graphics
• Seven camera angles
  
• Textured  space backgrounds and planets provide a backdrop
  
• Heads up display with radar, target images, and other stats
• Explosions using a particle system
• Autopilot, take off, and landing cut scenes
• 3d mission briefings
• Detailed 3d cockpit interiors
• Configurable graphics detail levels, choose your own screen resolution.
  

Gameplay

• Over 20 ships
• Over 43 missiles and guns,  most with unique sounds and graphics
• Ship and weapon stats based on Wing Commander game balance
  
• Energy weapons, target-tracking missiles
• Command and communicate with wingmen and enemies
• Multiple campaigns allowed
• A variety of mission types, including torpedo runs, patrol missions, assault missions, and defensive assignments
• Stats provided at mission debriefing
• Target and destroy individual capital ship parts.
• More accurate capital ship collision detection.
• Cargo inspection
• Traitor detection
• Custom mission objectives

Sound and Music

• Full 3d accelerated surround sound.  On systems with four or more speakers, one can literally hear attacks approaching from the rear. 3d sound is emulated for stereo systems.  This 3d sound capability was not present in the Wing Commander series.
  
• Individual sounds for weaponry.
• A dynamic music score changes with the events during the mission.  Intense combat or a quiet return home trigger different songs, for example.
  

Joystick Support

• Force Feedback.  The shock of a missile hitting your tail.  The impact of a collision with another ship. The force of your own missile launch.  The rattle of your own ship exploding.  All these effects can be felt with a force feedback joystick.  This feature pushes the envelope, as it was not present in the Wing Commander series.
  
• Support for joysticks using x, y, and a twist axis for banking .  Joystick throttle support.  Use up to 6 joystick buttons, plus the joystick point of view (POV) controls.
  

Editing

• All ships, weaponry, missions, briefings, mission background graphics & lighting, and campaigns can be opened easily with any text editor. The standard XML file format is used.
  
• All graphics are stored in the standard BMP and PNG formats, editable with any paint program.
• 3d import from wavefront .obj files.
• Sounds are standard WAV and MP3 files.
• A graphical mission editor is provided. 
  
• Create missions with custom 3d mission briefings and auto-generated spoken text in less than 10 minutes.
• Fully scriptable missions, cutscenes, briefings, and gameflow.