Seems there's a memory leak within the UI of vehicles. I was playing all morning, on foot with the occational hoping into a Flash to get from point to point. No problems. However I grabbed a Lightning within 10 minutes of fighting my fps grinding to a halt the terrain and everything started flash and going invisable so it look like I was fighting nothing and floating, then it crashed. I restarted my PC, went to the warp gate grabbed a Magrider. Floated out to some combat, same thing occurred.
Run your Planetside 2 Launchpad and log in, but do not press play. Click on the Advanced Tools icon (looks like a hexagon surrounding a wrench) in the lower left and then choose the option to open game directory. In the window/folder that comes up, locate and delete the following files PlanetSide2.exe UserOptions.ini SoundSettings.xml LoadingScreen.xml InputProfiles.xml vivoxoal.dll vivoxsdk.dll Once these files are deleted, close the Planetside 2 window/folder and go back to the Launchpad > Advanced Tools/Settings menu. Click on the Validate Game Assets menu option and then press the green Validate button to have the Launchpad check your game files, and download any missing or corrupt files. Let me know if that helps.