yup, when i disabled the 3D Radar i was able to progress. the only thing that bothered me was the extreme slowness of the loading process, and the .ogg playback sounded terrible. lots of stuttering and a couple of times where the file sounded like it was being split in half, hearing two voices, one slightly higher than the other.
yesterday, i experienced a fighter06.pof IBX Cache error. something about it not having enough security or something. would this be the cause of the slowness of loading?
[EDIT] damn that redmenace, posting a new build that works better.

but the .ogg playback still has some stuttering.
also, i got this:
Warning: EFF: No frame images were found. EFF, fighter2t-01a-glow.eff, is invalid.
File:c:\fs2_open\code\bmpman\bmpman.cpp
Line: 1761
[This filename points to the location of a file on the computer that built this executable]
Call stack:
------------------------------------------------------------------
fs2_open_d-20060126.exe 00877aaf()
fs2_open_d-20060126.exe 00875ac7()
fs2_open_d-20060126.exe 008781f4()
fs2_open_d-20060126.exe 00800c12()
fs2_open_d-20060126.exe 006e7165()
fs2_open_d-20060126.exe 006e7018()
fs2_open_d-20060126.exe 006eb25d()
fs2_open_d-20060126.exe 006eba3a()
fs2_open_d-20060126.exe 006f0291()
fs2_open_d-20060126.exe 006f15a2()
fs2_open_d-20060126.exe 008b40df()
fs2_open_d-20060126.exe 006cfb4b()
fs2_open_d-20060126.exe 006dd112()
fs2_open_d-20060126.exe 0088ed3d()
fs2_open_d-20060126.exe 006dba5c()
------------------------------------------------------------------
while i have mv_textures 'n junk.
