> I guess that leaves us with, say, 1% of CPU and GPU bandwidth to be set 
> aside
> for preloading maps - at most. And it's a task that can be easily 
> priorized:
> There's no strict deadline to get the job done; for instance, in the heat 
> of
> the action it can safely be deferred until after the fight (all the more 
> since
> you usually don't move very far during a hot battle).

Especially if you keep a low-res (both mesh and texture) version available 
for the surrounding parts of the map anyway, if there is any slight delay 
with the high-res versions loading it's not going to ruin anything.  This 
happened in GTA San Andreas, if you (maybe with a little hack (-:) drove or 
flew really fast then you could actually see these low-res models for a 
second until the high res ones could be loaded.

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