TIE Fighter: Total Conversion patch adds ray tracing, but honestly I'm way more excited about the animated concourse menu

Animated menu of star destroyer
(Image credit: TFTC)

Sometimes a couple screenshots and a list of patch notes just isn't enough for an update. Sometimes a new patch needs a proper trailer, and that's the case for version 1.3.3 of the Tie Fighter: Total Conversion mod. You can watch it below, and it's pretty glorious.

If you're not up to speed, the TIE Fighter: Total Conversion mod is a port of the 1994 LucasArts flightsim TIE Fighter into 1999's X-Wing Alliance engine, and as a wise man once said it may well be the perfect mod. Full disclosure: I was the wise man. And I wasn't exaggerating! It's more than just a remaster of a cool old game, it adds to and enhances it with tons of new features, improvements, music, and missions. Heck, it even supports VR.

And the modders behind TFTC aren't done yet. There's a lot in update 1.3.3, including several new star destroyer models and experimental TIE starfighters, improvements to flight controls, new explosion effects and visuals, and more. If you like shiny stuff, there's even the option to enable ray tracing now, so the already stunning mod looks even better.

But I have to be honest, I'm most excited about the main concourse screen. In the original game, that's the menu screen where you choose what you're gonna do next: go into the training simulator, pick which mission you want to play, fly in historical battles, examine different ships in the tech room, and so on. It was a mostly static screen, though hovering the mouse over the options would open and close the doors to the different rooms:

TIE Fighter original concourse"

TIE Fighter Total Conversion improves the heck out of that, just like it does every other aspect of the game. The new concourse is animated! You've still got stormtroopers standing at their posts, but you can also see officers strolling past, someone using a hovering cargo cart, a protocol droid walking by, maybe a few pilots hanging around waiting for their next assignment. It's somehow utterly nostalgic and completely new at the same time.

Tie Fighter Total Conversion"

You also have a nice view through the windows outside of a planet in the distance, some starfighters, and maybe another star destroyer slowly cruising by. And what you see in these new concourse animations will change depending on your level of progress through the campaign. That's some wonderful detail, especially considering this is literally just the game's main menu. I love it. I want to play through the whole thing just to see how the concourse changes.

Okay, I'm done geeking out over a menu. If you haven't tried out TIE Fighter Total Conversion yet, you really should. The mod is completely free but you will need a copy of Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance which is only $10 on Steam. And here are the complete patch notes for TFTC version 1.3.3. Good hunting, pilot! 

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.

Read more
BattleTech concept art
BattleTech has grown into a sprawling, must-play mech war sim
Fighter spacecraft maneuver around carrier ships in Nebulous Fleet Command
Spacefleet fight sim Nebulous gets carriers in biggest update yet
Dark Messiah duel
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic gets co-op mode and extra content thanks to the mod community's collaboration with Ubisoft: 'To see it all come together has been very emotional for us'
Screenshots from Half-Life 2 RTX, showing the various new effects delivered by full ray tracing and enhanced assets.
I just played Half-Life 2 RTX, a fully ray-traced overhaul of the original, and its meaty headcrabs have me hankering for more
More than 5 years after launch, Control gets a surprise patch that lets everyone play the Hideo Kojima mission
An electric encounter with an enemy in Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
One of the best Return to Castle Wolfenstein mods just got an update that turns the WW2 FPS into a Killing Floor-style wave shooter
Latest in Sim
An ancient, angry stone mech from No Man's Sky's new Relics update
No Man’s Sky lets you unearth ancient, angry mechs in the astro-archaeology filled Relics update
Dwarf Fortress adventure mode art
After 23 years of making Dwarf Fortress, even its creator is still 'terrified' of drowning all his dwarves with aquifers: 'Part of the problem is we are just not good at videogames'
Tarn Adams, who cofounded Bay 12 Games with his brother Zach, talks about their single-player simulation game "Dwarf Fortress" during an interview at their home office in Poulsbo, Washington, west of Seattle, on December 9, 2022. - A cult favorite among indie game fans, "Dwarf Fortress" has been available for purchase on the Steam online store since December 6, a first for this title that has been distributed for free since its debut in 2006. The real-time management game, set in a medieval-fantasy world and involving overseeing a group of dwarves seeking to build a mighty fortress, has climbed to the fourth best-selling weekly title on Steam. (Photo by Jason Redmond / AFP) (Photo by JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images)
Dwarf Fortress' creator is so tired of hearing about AI: 'Press a button and it writes a really sh*tty, wrong essay about something—and they still take your job'
Decorations in TCG Card Shop Simulator
TCG Card Shop Simulator finally adds the ability to decorate our stores, and suddenly all my profits are being spent on adorable Pigni posters
A person on a snowmobile riding a track in the forest in game Sledders.
Powder enthusiasts seem pretty pleased with new physics-based realistic snowmobile sim Sledders
Dean Hall at GDC 2025.
Outer space inspired DayZ's Dean Hall to become a modder and game developer, and now he's making a Kerbal successor called Kitten Space Agency
Latest in News
Story of Seasons - A cahacter in a purple tuxedo stands outside in a town square talking to the player
Story of Seasons is doing another Harvest Moon remake and it might be the best the series has ever looked
Assassin's Creed Shadows change seasons - An upper-body shot of Yasuke looking cheerfully up into the distance.
Assassin's Creed Shadows puts up the 'second highest day-one sales revenue in Assassin's Creed franchise history'
A witch riding a broom sails past a Fish and Chips shop.
Cozy gamers rejoice: Witchbrook finally has a release window, and yes, you can fly around on a broom with your friends
starcraft 2 face
StarCraft fans taunted by the announcement of a new StarCraft... board game
kingdom come: deliverance 2 henry looks confused
'Medieval Batman' completes Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 pacifist playthrough with zero kills and 535 knockouts
SUQIAN, CHINA - OCTOBER 6, 2024 - Illustration Tencent's plan to buy Ubisoft, Suqian, Jiangsu province, China, October 6, 2024. (Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Ubisoft and Tencent are forming a new company that will take control of its most successful franchises: Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six