I preferred DXX-Rebirth. It was simple to set up, and kept the classic look while "smoothing the rough edge"- literally and figuratively.
However, there's also D2X-XL, which supposedly is a more robust source port. Tons of people on the Descent boards suggested I try it because it's more like Freespace 2 Open in the sense it really aims to add tons of up to date bells and whistles, and has more mod support.
I don't use it, but are you gonna do a spotlight on this one too? Different strokes for different folks. Some my prefer to tinker more with Descent.
Either way, thanks for the games and the community support! This spotlights and hidden gems are fun.

Seeing I've got every Descent Game and Expansions which came out I'll definitely give this a try !

I hate to say it, but the last time I tried to replay Descent 1 a few years ago, I couldn't do it, because the game only runs at 320x240. While I don't mind blocky graphics, my eyes aren't good enough to process a complex 3D play field at such a low resolution - I can't see what I'm doing beyond a few feet in front of me, and it gives me eye strain.
I remember trying out a source port for it (maybe DX-1, I don't remember), but it didn't work very well. It was unstable and enemies fired black boxes at me. So, I just skipped to Descent 2, which supports higher resolutions out of the box.
This week I've been playing Descent 1 again, and thanks to D1X-Rebirth, I can play it in glorious anti-aliased 1024x768, and my eyesight is saved.

I think the original projects were and [url=http://icculus.org/d2x/]D2X.
Not that it matters, of course. It's just nice to see the history.
I started with these ones and the next logical path seemed like it was to D2X-XL, rather than Rebirth, so that's what I use now. It is great to have a native port on my Mac of one of my favorite games ever!

Descent at 1440 by 900. I lived and breathed this BITD. It looked great and ran smooth as silk with this mod. Good one to point out.

there was actually some drama on the gog descent forum between the creators of the two different mods.

Was it as awesome as the drama about the Vampire: Bloodlines patches?

There was only drama because people joined in. As soon as I saw that topic go south, I just left. It was just a bunch of pointless BS imo. Both creators were rude/condescending to each other. It's not fun to join a conversation like that.

Probably not as feud over the patches between Wesp and Tessera spanned multiple forums and required banhammer (mostly aimed at Tessera) or threat of it to stop in some places.

gog has a banhammer?

Well I'm sure it does but we were talking about flamewar between Wesp and Tessera over Vampire Masquerade the Bloodlines patches happened long ago and spanned many related forums all over the web. As a result Tessera (at least) was banned from number of forums and Tessara banned Wesp from his/her forum. It's still touchy subject even though Tessera hasnt been modding VMtB for almost two years now (while Wesp continues to mod away).
Or did flamewar over it spark here as well, frostcircus? I missed it if it did.

Hey just to let y'all know...those screenshots aren't from Rebirth. (Or at least maybe half of them are.) I could provide you with some updated screenshots from the latest release, which has improved graphics even more! :)

(Also, this is a little nit-picky but technically it's a source port, not a mod ;)

I'm a beta-tester over at DXX-Rebirth, so I can probably provide most information anybody wants :)

First of all I would like to confirn that many, if not all of the screenshots posted above have been taken with D2X-XL and not DXX-Rebirth, which raises a few questions on my side. You can tell that from the presence of effects like lightning and transparency, or HUD elements like the equipment icons and the radar.

The brief history given in the article also isn't quite correct. Work on the D2X-XL source port (at that time time named "D2X-W32") based on D2X had started over a year before the Rebirth project did. D2X-W32 was renamed to D2X-XL around that time because it had been made available to Linux and OS X users as well and sported numerous extensions both to the original game and the D2X projects. D2X-XL also offers full Descent 1 support (meaning you don't have to install two programs to be able to play both games). If you want to know more about D2X-XL, visit http://www.descent2.de.

The following Youtube videos will give you an impression of how it is to play Descent with D2X-XL:

Descent 1: First Strike level 1
Descent 2: Counter Strike level 1
Descent 2: Counter Strike level 2
Scenes from D2X-XL levels