just ran into this:
http://home.arcor.de/famscheffler/ven_badness.avi
(I can upload the mpg source if required but recent mplayer/vlc should be able to play it back)

I'm 1000km away from the center there but it'S already visible at 100km. When zoomed in it even whobbles slightly when I'm close to the center.

running
Linux 2.6.something
xorg 7.0
ati binary drivers
radeon 9550
maxed out settings

vlc for intel mac said the avi was broken and tried fixing it. it sort of played, but there were artifacts, like a big green wireframe triangle.

there's some weird ghosting around the edges of planets/moons, and they lag behind the rest of the background when you pan around, revealing a white area...

(mplayer has some tendency to break on odd codecs, but it also plays stuff nothing else does)

aww damn the thing is encoded with mencoders avcodec module.. I thought since vlc uses avcodec too it would handle it. guess I was wrong :P

try this then:
http://home.arcor.de/famscheffler/ven_badness.mpg

Nah, VLC for PowerPC can play it at least.