Hi everyone,
I installed the game last night and noticed a few graphic anomalies. All the text looks like it's underlines or has unusual underscores near the bottom the characters. In the main "ship menu" screen, doing mouse-overs in a particular section (i.e. moving the mouse over the campaign screen) reveals an animation but the entire area/square shifts off a few pixels.
As a note, the game runs at full screen at 1900x1200. I know, overkill :) I adjusted the detailed settings to maximum from a presumably "high" default.
Is this just graphics compensation for updating the game to current cards and operating systems?
My config:
Core Duo 3Ghz (Intel/Wolfdale)
eVGA 8800GT 512MB (running at 1900x1200)
4GB RAM
Gigabyte Motherboard
Vista Ultimate (32 bit)

Try here: [url=]http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/FAQ/technical.html[/url]

This happens on my original copy of FreeSpace2 even when patched to the latest available. In your graphics card settings you might want to look for an option called "alternate pixel center".
...When I tried it on an 8800GTX I remember seeing the issue in menus but never finding a setting in the ForceWare driver that would fix the problem. Oh well.

I had the same problems with an ATI 2400XT graphics card (including a frustrating problem where the screen would just go black, but the machine was still running (sound effects matched with mouse clicks/key strokes), but after upgrading my drivers from a January release to last week's version, everything has been hunky dory.

I did a little searching on "alternate pixel center". My nVidia drivers (the latest ones) don't have this, but a little fiddling in regards to Antialiasing did the trick.
See the attached .JPG
Basically to into the NVidia Control Panel.
1. Switch to view Advanced Settings.
2. Select "Manage 3D Settings" from the 3D Settings list on the left.
3. I clicked on the "Program Settings" tab so that this will only affect Freespace 2.
4. Change the feature "Antialiasing - Mode" to "OFF".
5. Graphical glitches gone :)
Sorry this post is so many months later - I'd actually not logged into my GOG.com account in awhile and I haven't touched Freespace 2 yet :-P I need to pickup a nice flightstick.

If you use the FreeSpace Open source port (works for both games) these issues won't occur, and you can even enable antialiasing and all sorts of fancy features the original game didn't have to make it look even more beautiful.

I'd like to clarify, that FreeSpace Open is an open source version of the FS2 game engine. You can't use FSO with the original FS1.

FSO supports FS1; I haven't actually used that yet so I'm not too sure how it works (I assume you have to copy the files into the folder or point a config file to them or something).

Additional clarification: FSO does not support FS1 directly. There is a "mod" known as the FreeSpace Port, or FSPort in short, that contains ported missions, models and such, thus allowing one to play the FS1 campaign with the FS2/FSO engine. Still, using FSPort does not involve the original FS1 in any way. In fact, trying to mix up FSO and FS1 would probably cause a kitteh to die.

Hi Arkose. Wasn't really paying attention to FSO. FSO includes updated effects and additional mods/campaigns? At least, that's what I think from the link? :-)

Yes, that's the general idea. With just the basic setup everything looks much as it did in the original game, but the installer also lists various additional data files you can get to add more detailed things. The installer also lists a few popular mods which it can download and set up for you. Even when you have the files downloaded some of the visual improvements are turned off by default; you can use the launcher to select what ones you want.

Turey's Installer has its problems. But manual installation is always an option, and it really isn't any more difficult than using the Installer.
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,47640.0.html

Very interesting. I'll have a gander at it. Thanks again again to both of you.