Is it possible to get freespace 2 to work on mac os x? And if so, is there a good set of directions somewhere to set it up? thanks

Yup. You have 2 possibilities to play FS2 on your Mac: 1) Wine 2) Freespace Open

I would go with the latter. It is a modern, open source engine which makes the game look beautiful - and is native on OS X as well! It is the version I run on my Mac.

You still have to use Wine to get the game out of its Windows-only GOG installer (use Wineskin for this - is free, if you need help I can do that but for just installing a game is fairly straightforward. You download the Winery, make a wineskin and then tell the new Wineskin to install the game from the GOG installer, after it is done you open package contents and move the game's files onto your Mac into whatever folder you want).

After you have done that you can read hard-light's Getting Started page. Then you can follow the manual instructions for Mac OS X here (they have the Windows version followed by the OS X version inline): http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=79546.0. Unfortunately the automated installer they used to have is being revamped and the old version doesn't work anymore and the new version isn't ready yet. However, the manual instructions are pretty straightforward.

After that you have a brand new, open-source, native Mac version of Freespace 2! Note all the mediaVPs, the new game assets, take up a lot of hard drive space, but they make the game look fantastic. Best of luck!

Thank you so much for this info. It worked so well! Just waiting for my Mac joystick to arrive from Amazon now.

Getting FS2 with upgrades running on my mac took about an hour but the guides here an don the FS wiki are really easy to follow.

Glad to be of help. :)

You can also download FSport and play Freespace 1 in the new game engine. Morally, I would still buy Freespace 1 on GOG (if you don't own it already) since the hard-light modders had to reuse some of the old game assets (cinematics, voice, briefings, missions, etc ...) and also, practically, I had some trouble with the encodings the FSCP used for the FS1 cinematics (Mac problem I think), so having the originals on hand helped. GOG now supplies a Mac-compatible version of FS1 (through Wine) but I would still play it using FSport and the FSO engine because a) it looks nicer and b) Mac-Wine has trouble with joysticks for some older games which use an older joystick interface than dinput.

Good hunting!

Thanks for the instructions. I was tearing out my hair with Turey's Automated Installer and its non-working-ness. This was very helpful!