XP Pro here. i experience flickering and freezing during the play, even at default settings...
any help?

Could you please post your system specs and OS?

NO PROB:
XP PRO SP3
GEFORCE 7900 GS AGP, DRIVER 178.13

Your graphics drivers are quite old you could try updating those first.

WHY? THE GAME IS FAR OLDER.....

Well nvidia have a tendancy to break games with drivers and fix them again. Not nessicarily the case here but it can't hurt to try updating them and if it doesn't work and you don't want the new drivers you can always roll them back to what you have now.

DRIVER UPDATED, NOTHING HAPPENS...

for me the game is playable only at low details setting or it freezes during 3d scenes. probably it is related to the mix of 3d and bitmap graphics...

Same here. Edit: actually, not, I'm speaking of Aquanox 2.

The game flunctuates between 30 and 60 fps with vsync on.

It happens the same whether on minimum or highest settings.

I'd think such an old game would run better.

Were there even any dual core CPUs when it came out?

My specs aren't great for modern games anymore but this isn't one...

E8500
4GB Ram
GTX285

With this performance, the mouse control issues (FPS mode isn't remotely close to the description as far as mouselook is concerned) and no support for gamepads (again, I see people playing Aquanox 1 with one in this forum, yet the sequel doesn't allow me to change "mouse" into anything else) I regret getting it... Back to FreeSpace 2 and Tachyon: The Fringe I guess...

for mouse problems, i find that a low dpi mouse makes aiming a lot smoother