If you zoom the map in single zoom increments the map redraws with a nice fade effect like google maps, if you zoom in or out more than one zoom increment then the silverlight map goes to a white screen and the tiles then fade from white which does not look as good as google and bing where the current tiles are zoomed in or out to any scale and the whole experience is much smother and more fluid. Is there a way of forcing the silverlight control to do this?
I believe this is intentional and that there isn't a way to alter the behaviour. It seems to behave this way because the alternative is to zoom in to the current tile, which then would just show very large labels and this is no more informative than a white screen. It does seem to behave in a similar way to Bing and Google, as they both seem to show grey sometimes while tiles are loading.
