One thing I don't understand is why games that target consoles don't do 
infrastructure-type improvements on PCs. For example, Portal has, at the end 
of each level, an elevator ride, that freezes in the middle as a loading 
screen, then resumes. Well, my XBox has half a gig of RAM, and my PC has 6. 
Or 16, depending which one you're talking about. Would it really be so hard 
to have a low-priority thread loading the next level into a second block of 
RAM during the current level, or even during the elevator ride? (I'm 
assuming it doesn't actually take several seconds to copy textures from RAM 
to video card, does it?)

Batman did such a sweet job of this, even on consoles, that I surprised a 
few friends by pointing out where the loading screens were that they hadn't 
noticed. :-)  That really was a technically-awesome game.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   People tell me I am the counter-example.

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