Not sure if its my computer or AI War, but it didn't seem like this was supposed to work like this currently.
So, I opened up a game on 8.001, and while I didn't notice anything like the title in the menu, I did when generating maps. Unlike its rather quick switch between maps in 7.058 and earlier, it felt like it took ages to make a new map. Not terrible, but certainly a couple seconds per map. Got into the game, clicked on my lab, and the lab window was entirely blank for a couple seconds until it loaded all the tech icons, while it took so little before I had to be looking at the tech window for me to notice the flicker. It took the same lengthy-seeming amount for each of the tech tabs, and the command station build tabs, and slightly less for the sidebar icons when hovered over (they went completely blank until it redrew with the grey box instead of the green or orange ones, making command groups produced a blank box until it loaded also, and looking at a planet besides my own lead to a big block of blank spots for a couple seconds along with a missing planet for the same length of time), the galaxy map had all its map dots and lines and names properly loaded but not the background (which was black).
However, once it had a particular ship or thing's icon loaded (whether in a window, far zoom, or can-see-the-art-zoom), I didn't have anything like the above happen again, except for mapgen with bonus ships I hadn't seen yet, until I closed the game and reopened it.
