Kinda Slow Loading

[Halo]

Just wondering why Aces High is slower loading than used to be.  

Each time sign on there's a gray loading bar than races through stuff like textures, ground detail, trucks ... thought all that was a one-time deal each new version.

And game frame rate is much slower getting up to speed.  Used to get 40 to 50 frames right away.  Now sometimes 0 to 1 or 3 frames or so hang around several seconds, then slowly pick up to the 40 or 50 and more frames.  

Even assuming more detail and info each version, this one seems unusually slow to load.

P4 2.26 GHz
512 MB DDR-SDRAM
NVidia GeForce T-4400
XP Home
1024x768x32
Direct-X 9.0

[OOZ662]

These bars aren't the caching of the textures; they added progress bars to the texture preload before each arena entry. It seems longer because you're watching it, but the load up time isn't different.