Something I noticed is that when I disabled v-sync the FPS stayed at ~60. I disabled it right on the video card itself, so I am kinda at a loss for how to more effectively disable it.

Edit - Off topic, by why does the ‘target nearest enemy’ not actually target the nearest enemy? It seems to only target the nearest mission objective. Is this because I am using discovery, or is there something else I am missing?

Yes to the first two, no to the third. I am a little ways into the game now (mission 3) so am just a little hesitant to wipe it all again, although I expect I will eventually anyway. Would a registry cleaner take care of that, or should I look manually?

Aside, damn this game is fracking difficult. I geared up a my ship, the one king flew, with lvl 2 shields, lvl 3 guns, counter measures and mines, have gotten pretty good at using the boost to screw with enemy aiming, yet I still get eaten alive if I don’t spend most of my time fleeing, which allows those I am supposed to be protecting get destroyed (mission 3). Either I am missing something, this game is bloody HARD, or I am just a lousy pilot.

Have done, timmy. Triple buffering is always on, and I tried with and withotu v-sync, but the stutter remains. I ran fraps, and the FPS never went below 55, and when it was stuttering the FPS seemed to be at 60. I think it is that microstutter effect associated with multi GPU systems, but I only have one card. The image will pan smoothly, then it will be jerky for less than a second, and return to being smooth. Than second mightn’t seem like much, but it is very immersion breaking, and when there are several in a ten second span it is truly annoying.

I never install to default folders, the game sits in d:\freelancer (partition). Windows 7 64 bit, yup.

Irritations are bloody tough to ignore, and this new stutter is almost as irritating as the knowledge that this computer can, and has, run this game perfectly. You did remind me, Timmy, that my catalyst control center recently updated itself, so I rolled my drivers back but that didn’t seem to affect it either.

Kaytfoh, what is this dx9 for freelancer you speak of?

I have done that three times now. All three reinstalls had the new stutter. My comp is a bit sub standard, so when it ran so beautifully the first time I really noticed it. I was amazed at how smooth everything was, sure there was aliasing, and the graphics look a little dated, but they ran so smoothly it blew me away. So when the reinstall, and subsequent ones, introduced the stutter the difference was apparent immediately.

I installed freelancer and the discovery 4.84, and the game ran perfectly, completely smooth. I disabled discovery because I wanted to change a few settings (or look at them anyway, I clicked through before reading accidentally) and I also activated rotating planets and jet trails, and after reactivating I notice the graphics stuttered during on planet animations (probably in space too, but I have not gotten back there yet), so I uninstalled and reinstalled freelancer, as well as discovery, but the stutter remains.

I am kinda stumped; why would it install and run perfectly the first time on the default settings (even though it said it didn’t recognize my card it set everything to max), yet simply deactivating and reactivating discovery caused this? Could it be the jet trails and rotating planets that cause this, even though I am only on the surface?

Gonna try tweaking some more, I can’t play games with stutters, hurts my eyes. If you have any ideas I would be grateful for the feedback.

Edit - It’s not the jet trails or rotating planets, it still stutters after disabling them. So it ran perfectly until discovery was deactivated the first time, and now I cannot get the game to run without stuttering.

Edit 2 - Yup, it stutters in space too, and seems much more susceptible to slowdown. The first time I had played to the end of mission 2, with the artifact smuggler, and none of the battles or cutscenes ran less than absolutely perfectly, no stutter, no pause, no lag, nothing. Now the first battle of the first mission triggers lag, slowdown and includes some stuttering. How the heck could a reinstall so destroy this programs performance? I have reinstalled since, tried numerous settings in-game and on my video card, it seems to have no effect. (sigh, I really wish I had simply not deactivated the discovery in the first place.) I simply cannot fathom why the game would run so perfectly the first time, yet subsequent installs yields a stuttery game.