Street Fighter 5 mod makes loading a match much quicker

One of the more annoying things about Street Fighter 5 is the loading time - particularly the time it takes to get from character select into a game. Well, as with so many video game issues, there's a mod for that.

ToolAssisted created a mod pack that makes the loading much faster - so fast, in fact, that you go from character select pretty much straight into a game.

What's going on here? Apparently all ToolAssisted did was unlock the frame-rate of the character select user interface.

What this suggests is the game is perfectly capable of going from character select to the white flash that signals the beginning of a match faster than it currently does, but holds itself back.

Why would Capcom make the game do this? Perhaps it's to ensure there's a unified experience across platforms (Street Fighter 5 features cross-platform play across PC and PlayStation 4).

Or, it could be Capcom really wants players to take note of the animations that display when you select a character.

Here's a video comparing the mod-powered loading time to the un-modded loading time. As you can see, the difference is pronounced.

Apparently Street Fighter 5 does not actually load anything during this character select animation period. Posting on Reddit, _aciD_ points out that Street Fighter 5's versus screen is just for show, and the loading takes place during the white fade.