[Kestrellius]

...or the other MediaVPs, actually. Normal FSport works just fine. But if I try to run the MediaVPs version, I get the first loading screen, and then everything is constantly flickering to black every couple frames. It does stop if the game freezes, though. (Not a real freeze, just that little "loading freeze" when hitting the continue button or whatever. Although I expect if the game did properly freeze, it would stop the flickering as well.)

Now, I did do some digging, and I came up with:

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=89536.0

this thread, which was about the exact same issue. I was considering just posting in that thread -- this forum seems less bothered about zombies than some other boards I've come across -- but I decided to do this instead. Apologies if it was the wrong thing to do. Anyway, that guy solved it by running in administrator mode, which I tried to no avail. Of course I'm not sure what exactly he was running in administrator mode, but I tried doing it on everything just to be sure.

Anyway. I'm sorry, this is a crappy post. I'm just tired, I guess. If anyone has any thoughts, it'd be much appreciated...

[AdmiralRalwood]

Please post your fs2_open.log file.  Instructions on how to do this can be found in this post.

[Kestrellius]

Right. Sorry, writing the post was just...dragging out, and I wanted to get it posted. I had a feeling I'd need to put up the log, but I couldn't remember enough to just go ahead and do so. I don't know.

Anyway, I got the log, with the rather significant caveat that the flickering didn't actually happen when I ran the debug file in windowed mode. I'll test it again in a moment to see if it was the debug file or the windowed mode that fixed the issue -- I'm guessing it was the file; I don't really see what effect the windowed mode would have. If that works, should I just use the debug when I want to play FSport? Or is there a downside?

Right, okay, yeah, this is the right one. I was pretty sure it just wasn't showing the .log because extensions were disabled.

[attachment deleted by nobody]

[AdmiralRalwood]

should I just use the debug when I want to play FSport? Or is there a downside?

Debug builds are unoptimized; unless you're using some sort of supercomputer (or playing a really non-taxing mission), your framerate will probably plummet into unplayability. Can you try it on a recent Nightly Build and see if you still have problems? They use a different renderer which may work better (or worse, until you disable shadows and/or deferred lighting if your computer can't handle those, but a GTX 970 should do all right there).

[Kestrellius]

It turned out to be the windowed mode, actually, which I did not see coming. Still flickers if I run it in fullscreen with debug. I was able to play in the...what was it called, fullscreen window or something? Borderless window? I dunno. It's basically just a larger windowed mode -- for a while, but eventually an error or something happened. I probably should have remembered what it said exactly.

I'll try out the nightly build, assuming I can figure out how it actually works. For the longest time I couldn't get FSO to work at all, mostly because I had no idea the launcher existed. This is what I get for not reading the directions closely enough. The upshot is that I have like four copies of FSO and everything related to it in my Freespace folder...

[Jeff Vader]

Go to the in-game settings and check that the lighting is on the highest setting. I got funny black stripes in screenshots once when I had accidentally lowered that particular value.

[jr2]

Make sure you have the latest graphics drivers for your video card / or perhaps try downgrading a version or two if the latest one is the one with the issue.