Most of the fixes appear to address X-Wing:Alliance like XWAHacker which I even downloaded in hopes it could be used in any x-wing series game.
I have been trying to find a similar tool for XvT since getting it yesterday, including perusing these forums, darksaber's site, and other SW gaming resources but I haven't been able to find a widescreen fix. I'd greatly appreciate a link or advice on how to run it in WIN8.1 widescreen if this is possible. I'd love to play one of my all-time favorite games again in fullscreen mode, thanks for any help in advance.

Unfortunately you can't mark your own replies as the solution and after requesting support they linked me here within the same day:

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/UnableToSetGPUScaling.aspx

I had to download new AMD drivers then used the Catalyst to change my overall aspect ratio. The instructions were very clear and I'm grateful to the gog suppor team for being so prompt and answering the follow-up questions I had.

Curious if the effect is that the regular image is stretched horizonally to fill a 16:9 display or if it somehow redraws the image so you get use out of that extra width?

Yea that's not "widescreen". That's using your gpu's control panel to stretch and distort the image.