Minecraft (the indie phenomenon of the year) loads its world in chunks, so as you move past a chunk there's an occasional moment of what feels like a bit of lag, and sometimes screen redraw as it calculates what is viewable. It also has the concept of fog/far distance so you can alter how far it allows you to see ahead, so it can help those with slower computers. It runs in a browser, or via a downloadable client, so this is not too different from flash or air choice. Give people a choice which client, and give people a choice of render distance, level of graphic detail etc. and they feel in control and better for the experience.
For anyone unfamiliar with minecraft, it's a world building game, where the building blocks are literally cubes, like a big lego game, but has different gaming modes, and even at alpha stage this guy has made a million dollars. He's engaged the community for ideas as well, and also created the ability t mod. People love games they can mod. http://www.minecraft.net
