Im glad this topic was here.

I was about to go crazy trying to solve this problem with the flickering backgrounds, transparent stars and planets, and the weird anamoly that sometimes occurs as you approach a planet. It will start out as a hole in space, and then the planet will suddenly come into existance slowly from the middle of the hole.

I always run my graphics maxed out both in game and in the video card driver, never have problems with frame rates or graphical anamolies but for troubleshooting purposes I turned both all the way down. (Looked Horrible) but still did these things.