Shortly after posting this I found a post in another forum that had a solution that actually worked. I downloaded and did an over the top installation of the latest Windows XP graphics drivers for this chipset (G33) and it actually worked.

I would suggest stickying this thread, it seems to be a very common problem with Intel graphics and Windows Vista/7 systems. For some reason Freelancer just doesn’t like the Windows Vista/7 drivers.

So recently I decided to get back into Freelancer and tried installing it for the first time on this computer. At first everything seemed fine, it started up ok, but once I got in I noticed a major graphics problem that makes the game almost unplayable. On some screens like the equipment dealer, colony news and commodity trader the text just dances around the screen so I can’t read it. Here’s a screenshot which unfortunately does not do this problem justice.

Now, interestingly enough the actual game menus for loading, saving, etc actually work perfectly. Furthermore I can temporarily make the text dancing stop by moving the mouse cursor to one of the menu icons, like the one for the equipment dealer. Naturally once I move the cursor off the icons the dancing immediately starts again.

I’ve been doing some reading about the problem (like in this thread here) and found it seems to be because I’m running Windows Vista and have an integrated Intel graphics chipset (a GMA 3100 to be exact in my case). The only solution presented at the time that actually worked was upgrading to or dual booting XP, which sadly doesn’t seem to be an option currently. Those threads that I found about this topic seem to be a few years old, has anyone been able to find another solution?