Well, people, the "problem" has been solved.
I had an older pc running WinXP sitting in the corner and installed SH4 on it.
I ran the game and within minutes was treated with ocean graphics exactly like the ones at the beginning of this post.
The problem's not with my computer, but with having higher expectations regarding ocean graphics than what came with the game.
Sometimes the ocean looks great, but when it looks like the above pictures it looks terrible & I have to ask how in hell the developers let it get out the door like that.
By the way, I didn't do any saves or overwrite any; I just left Pearl & took off at 1024 tc.
stork100; Now I understand why you don't see anything wrong with the above pictures.
I'd like to thank all of you for patience & feedback through all this; the good news is that there's little chance you'll hear me moaning and groaning about it anymore, and it's what drove me to learn how to post pictures; thanks pb, for your reference to imgur awhile back.
