I read somewhere that the tilt-shift effect is actually a performance booster as well as stylistic choice – it creates an LOD cutoff that enables lower-poly models to be rendered in the background to offset extra-high detail in the foreground.
If true, that is a really awesome hack. I've always assumed the performance problems were more about O(n^2) simulations, such as every Sim evaluating every route for driving to work, etc. If it's mostly graphics bound this could be a big help.
The whole application sounds like an optimizer's dream. Improving performance (especially startup) has always one of the most fun aspects of programing for me and to take one something like sim city where there are probably tons of opportunities and many different things to consider would be a real fun job.
