History Main / DynamicLoading

* UsefulNotes/{{Operating System}}s

* ''VideoGame/SimCity 4'' only fully loads the part of the map where the camera is focused on in order to reduce memory usage. If the camera jumps to another part of the map or scrolls across the map too quickly, the loaded data at the first spot is purged while the area where the camera is currently focused on is loaded. Presumably, to avoid a crash due to load failure, the game ''always'' renders the ground first before loading any buildings and textures a la an old JPEG image, starting with a low-resolution version of the buildings and structures and then slowly adding full detail over time. In this way, even the largest cities can be loaded and played on a mid-end computer as long as the appropriate settings were adjusted. In extreme cases, the game may also default to preventing the player from using the highest zoom level. ''VideoGame/SimCity 4'''s dynamic loading is ''least'' obvious when using the U-Drive-It feature at maximum zoom level.

In the days of cartridge-based games, the time to load information was on the order of milliseconds; a blank screen for a couple of frames was sufficient. But data had to be decompressed before being run. While some games actually had load times (a few [[UsefulNotes/SuperNintendoEntertainmentSystem SNES]] games for example), as the size of games grew, larger storage was needed. And as is unfortunately the usual case for computers, larger storage is usually ''slower'' storage. But at least HDD is faster than optical media, and Solid State Drives are changing the game when it comes to how levels are built and structured in system memory.

** ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight'', the first {{Metroidvania}} installment in ''Franchise/{{Castlevania}}'' series, had the different areas of the castle connected by dark hallways exactly one screen long. By the time the player could walk from one side of the hall to the other, the next level would be finished loading. The hallways even had a "CD" engraving in the middle of the screen letting you know it was loading from CD. These halls are also in many of the UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance and [[UsefulNotes/NintendoDS DS]] installments of the series, despite being on cartridges that have much faster load time as it turned out that abruptly moving from one area to the next was rather jarring.

** ''Chinatown Wars'' for UsefulNotes/NintendoDS has no loading screens. Going too fast can cause you to arrive in a gray, featureless place until the landscape loads, though - this could be the result of the DS not having enough time to decompress the graphics.

** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker'' islands load while you are sailing towards them. In fact, the developers set the sailing speed as seen in the Gamecube version in order to ensure the islands do get loaded. If you somehow managed to beat out the dynamic loading, the game [[IrisOut irised-out]] and reset you in your boat in the loaded quadrant without a word. With the improved hardware of the UsefulNotes/WiiU, loading has improved to the point of being able to load the entire Great Sea at once, and there is a new [[SprintShoes Swift Sail]] for the boat obtainable in the game.

* ''Franchise/MassEffect'' has had a storied history with this trope. Many of these have been alleviated by the ''Legendary Edition'' on Platform/PlayStation5 and UsefulNotes/XboxSeriesXAndS with their SSD loads (to the point that doors you'd use to wait behind now open up instantly like any other door).

*** The elevators, which set the records for being the slowest elevators in any game, ''ever''. The elevator from C-Sec up to the Presidium could take up to ''two minutes'' to get there. Interestingly the elevator's speed is adjusted to match the loads: the lifts move slowly on Platform/PlayStation3 but are lightning-fast on PC and [=PlayStation 5=] (although oddly not on UsefulNotes/Xbox360 using the Install feature). To compensate this, you'd often get an ad or character-based small talk between Squad Mates to pass the time for ten seconds (so, about a fifth of the loading time). These are part of the reason why the prompt to skip the loads in the ''Legendary Edition'' are optional: outside of being [[NarmCharm beloved]] by some fans, you pick up two Assignments this way and get to know your Squad.

** The [[UsefulNotes/NintendoGameCube GameCube]] remake of the first Resident Evil had rooms load instantly, so the door animations were removed in early development versions. However, focus groups thought that not having these screens was disconcerting, so the animations were put back in (even though they now mask nothing.) Some vestige of this can be seen when [[spoiler:Hunters bash down doors to get to your character when they return to the mansion - once they do, going between the rooms where the door was results in an instant camera shift with no loading.]]

* The UsefulNotes/PlayStation game ''The Adventure of Little Ralph'', released only in Japan, has a feature reminiscent of ''Sonic the Hedgehog 3'': seamlessly interconnected levels. Once a player finishes a level, the game takes control of Ralph, moving him at a moderate speed, until the game data is loaded. Each level is connected through featureless corridors that match the decor of the next level.

** The original ''VideoGame/CrashBandicoot1996'' was ground-breaking at the time for how it dynamically loaded chunks of a level into memory as you moved through it, making it Progressive Loading. Importantly, load times were only five seconds long because the console would only have to load the start of a level, compared to 30-40 for most other games to load the whole level at once (this also meant that they could vastly exceed the size of the UsefulNotes/PlayStation1's RAM, because not all of it would be loaded in at once). This feat was so impressive that other developers thought they hacked the console or were given secret development tools from Sony.

** When the high-definition remastered ''God of War Collection'' was released on one UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 Blu Ray disc, "outrunning the dynamic loading" became more common, leading to more frequent loading pauses.

* ''Franchise/MassEffect'' has had a storied history with this trope. Many of these have been alleviated by the ''Legendary Edition'' on UsefulNotes/PlayStation5 and UsefulNotes/XboxSeriesXAndS with their SSD loads (to the point that doors you'd use to wait behind now open up instantly like any other door).

*** The elevators, which set the records for being the slowest elevators in any game, ''ever''. The elevator from C-Sec up to the Presidium could take up to ''two minutes'' to get there. Interestingly the elevator's speed is adjusted to match the loads: the lifts move slowly on UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 but are lightning-fast on PC and [=PlayStation 5=] (although oddly not on UsefulNotes/Xbox360 using the Install feature). To compensate this, you'd often get an ad or character-based small talk between Squad Mates to pass the time for ten seconds (so, about a fifth of the loading time). These are part of the reason why the prompt to skip the loads in the ''Legendary Edition'' are optional: outside of being [[NarmCharm beloved]] by some fans, you pick up two Assignments this way and get to know your Squad.

** Even though it was touted as needing the [[UsefulNotes/PlayStation5 PlayStation 5's]] fast SSD, ''Rift Apart'' may have not actually needed it as explained by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XOV3pZj8rI a video from Coding Secrets]]. The video explains that the fast paced sections the marketing team said ''needed'' an SSD were small, linear, and the player's control was limited. These were then separated by lightweight "void" spaces that would allow enough time to pre-load the next section. They also have an example using another game where there's two separate scenes going on but the game is still working on both on a UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 or UsefulNotes/Xbox360.

* In the ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'' games, Sonic can outrun the loading of the level, causing him to fall off the screen to his death, or the graphics to glitch. Granted, it's not like the developers didn't think the player would ''want'' to go fast in a Sonic game; you have to be breaking the game pretty damn hard.
** For later games like ''VideoGame/SonicUnleashed'' and ''VideoGame/SonicGenerations'', there is a specific engine designed to load data quickly (the Hedgehog Engine), using "triggers" that load sections of the environment seamlessly as you run towards the goal. Speed runners that know how to go past entire sections of the level might skip these, meaning most of the level will be invisible until they go past the next trigger.

** ''[[VideoGame/Castlevania1986 Castlevania]]'' loaded the screen tile by tile in vertical columns; screwing with this process allows for Simon to keep climbing staircases that should have terminated (most infamously, right before Dracula's BossCorridor, but this can be done to shortcut platforming elsewhere).

* ''VideoGame/PlanetSide 2'' utilizes dynamic loading to shorten the duration of its loading screens when respawning. When the game [[ObviousBeta first came out, the system was pretty bad]], leading to freshly logged-in players [[ItsRainingMen hot dropped into the combat zone]] landing in front of invisible enemy tanks while headless enemies sitting on a rock floating in a bottomless void mow them down with completely silent guns.

* ''VideoGame/Doom3'' has alot of speed bumps, such as waiting for a ladder to drop or door to unlock while fighting DemonicSpiders, and winding corridors and limited paths.

** In ''VideoGame/LuigisMansion3'', an elevator is used to get to different floors and as Luigi is travelling, the selected floor is loaded. Luigi can still move about and perform moves while waiting or, if kept still, [[EasterEgg begin humming the elevator music.]]

** The elevators in ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'', which set the records for being the slowest elevators in any game, ''ever''. The elevator from C-Sec up to the Presidium could take up to ''two minutes'' to get there. Interestingly the elevator's speed is adjusted to match the loads: the lifts move slowly on UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 but are lightning-fast on PC and [=PlayStation 5=] (although oddly not on UsefulNotes/Xbox360 using the Install feature).
*** To help with the above, you'd often get an ad or character-based small talk between Squad Mates to pass the time for ten seconds (so, about a fifth of the loading time). These are part of the reason why the prompt to skip the loads in the ''Legendary Edition'' are optional: outside of being [[NarmCharm beloved]] by some fans, you pick up two Assignments this way and get to know your Squad.
*** Other loads however aren't as lucky: the "decontamination" airlock on the Normandy serves as a loading screen in disguise, as is the elevator down to the Cargo Bay.

* In the Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration episode ''[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS4E8FutureImperfect Future Imperfect]]'', the ''Enterprise'' computer in the false reality has severe lag, and the turbolift temporarily fails. Both are given in-universe explanations, but in reality they are being used by Riker's captors to give themselves time to make up things on the fly whenever he deviates from what they had expected/prepared.

** This approach was repeated verbatim in ''VideoGame/GodOfWarRagnarok'', due to it being one of the last games released on the PS4.

** ''VideoGame/GodOfWarPS4'' is able to utilize a [[WarpWhistle fast travel system]] with a game that is [[TheOner one continuous shot]] by using loading corridors. When Kratos fast travels to another location, he is shunted to Yggdrasil first, a small area that loops endlessly until the new location is loaded, at which point a door appears.

* Some web browsers are capable of automatically [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_prefetching fetching the next page]] of a story spread across multiple web pages if each page's header specifies such prefetching. These meet the "fixed paths" pattern as the user reads the articles in order.
* HTTP inadvertently was built like this. As the internet required more complicated things, instead of an all-or-nothing approach, servers first transfer just the HTML file, then gradually load in resources such as CSS markup, images, and other goodies. This way, even if you're on an unreliable connection, you should at least be able to see the text content with hyperlinks (which may or may not be enough depending on the website).
* Modern UsefulNotes/{{Operating System}}s now load in parts of often-used apps as part of loading in the OS that when you do actually launch them, the app loads in much faster. To make sure that the loading time of the OS itself isn't as affected as much, these chunks are usually stored in a known place on the storage drive so it's easy to get to.
* Even a TabletopGame can have this. If you have a smart but somewhat disorganized GM, they'll often feed you little lore tidbits and the like while organizing papers for the next event.
* Many modern browsers will begin downloading a file as soon as the "open or save as" dialogue box or the file picker shows up, rather than only once you've confirmed that you want to open the file or save it to a particular path. If you take your sweet time deciding where to save your file and what filename to save it as, the file will likely be complete by the time the download progress bar appears.

* The Sleep and Hibernate modes of computers and gizmos are a way to let you "turn off" the machine without actually having to sit through the entire boot process when you want to use it again. Sleep mode shuts everything except RAM off, which allows the computer to more or less instantly jump back to where it was. Hibernate stores the contents of RAM into a file on the storage drive, letting the computer consume no power while being able to get back where you were. It takes longer to get out of hibernate than it does from sleep, but it's a lot faster than a cold boot.
** Windows has a special hibernate mode called Fast Boot that saves off the state of the hardware drivers so it doesn't have to initialize hardware devices the next time the computer is powered on. This allows the OS to boot faster while giving the user more or less a clean slate to work with.

* In the Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration episode ''[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS4E8FutureImperfect Future Imperfect]]'', the ''Enterprise'' computer in the false reality has severe lag, and the turbolift temporarily fails. Both are given in-universe explanations, but in reality they are being used by Riker's captors to give themselves time to make up things on the fly whenever he deviates from what they had expected/prepared.

* ''VideoGame/NeonXSZ'' cuts down on the time spent in the static loading screen by having the level itself fade in and letting the player loose while the game gets populated with friendly and hostile [=NPCs=].

** The remakes ''Fire Red'' and ''Leaf Green'' added eyecatches at the beginning of certain areas, viridian forest and some caves for example, that stay on the screen for a second before fading in or flashing to the actual map. These also appeard in Heartgold and Soulsilver. The Seagallop High Speed 7 was also a superfast loading screen whenever you wanted to visit the newly added Sevii islands. It was a split second long, but necessary since the Sevii Islands had their own separate map and couldn't simply be flown to.