@joepie91 I think this is due to something I've seen "recently" in game development that I call the "immersive main menu", where the game is simulated (in full effect) either in the background of, or parallel to, the main menu.
In some older games, like Ultima Online (my current time sink), you had a launcher that logged you into the game, let you choose your character, and once you were ready to play, would set up a completely separate window loading the actual game world. However, in probably 2005 or so, this was changed when games like World of Warcraft provided a more seamless character creator. You could look at your character exactly as they'd show up in game.
To do this, it would have to load part of the game before letting you do anything. This means the entire graphics stack, all player models, etc would have to be loaded. Developers could just pair that loading with the other loading sequences that already exist for the main menu, leading to a longer main menu load time, but a shorter in-game load time.
Developers probably started realizing having one longer chunk of loading at the start was ideal compared to reloading everything every time you go back to the main menu. For Cities Skylines, perhaps it was easiest to load a fake map and draw the main menu over it. You'd still load the graphics stack (maybe even in the background) before the game starts.
But, that all falls to pieces if (like in your example) the graphics settings are configured high enough to be noticable at the main menu.
As a side note, it's interesting that depth of field causes lag. You'd think they can use it to provide lower LOD rendering using a cheap blur algorithm.
@joepie91 I think this is due to something I've seen "recently" in game development that I call the "immersive main menu", where the game is simulated (in full effect) either in the background of, or parallel to, the main menu.
In some older games, like Ultima Online (my current time sink), you had a launcher that logged you into the game, let you choose your character, and once you were ready to play, would set up a completely separate window loading the actual game world. However, in probably 2005 or so, this was changed when games like World of Warcraft provided a more seamless character creator. You could look at your character exactly as they'd show up in game.
To do this, it would have to load part of the game before letting you do anything. This means the entire graphics stack, all player models, etc would have to be loaded. Developers could just pair that loading with the other loading sequences that already exist for the main menu, leading to a longer main menu load time, but a shorter in-game load time.
Developers probably started realizing having one longer chunk of loading at the start was ideal compared to reloading everything every time you go back to the main menu. For Cities Skylines, perhaps it was easiest to load a fake map and draw the main menu over it. You'd still load the graphics stack (maybe even in the background) before the game starts.
But, that all falls to pieces if (like in your example) the graphics settings are configured high enough to be noticable at the main menu.
As a side note, it's interesting that depth of field causes lag. You'd think they can use it to provide lower LOD rendering using a cheap blur algorithm.