Level Streaming in VR (Vive) - Make a seamless load without the Vive interrupt/pause/loading?

I have a persistent map for a staging area that I send the player too, the entire purpose is to delay while the next level loads. The average time there would approx 10-15 seconds (and I could enforce this if necessary). The level load takes about 3-4 seconds but the problem is while it is streamed in, my Steam VR device hangs. (It does the loading screen effect). It is very jarring and removes any presence my players might have built up in between scenarios.

I’ve tried :

-Experimenting with asynchronous loading with little change
-Changing when the level is loaded, before my staging function is fire or after, it makes little difference, the hang is always there.
-If I load the level with “Make Visible After Load” unticked, it is completely seamless. I can access anything in the level however it’s not visible. I’d have to GetAllActorsofClass and try toggling visibility and that seems like it has it’s own problems…

Is there a reason I can’t somehow “hide” this hanging effect. Is it a visibility issue, if I can see the area that the level will be loaded (occupies similar worldspace) then does a difference? I realize that PIE level streaming is different than a packaged build but I also know that if it hitches in PIE it can also hitch in a packaged build, it just all depends obviously.

Any other workarounds for this?

Most of my VR projects are based on Level Streaming and I would love to know solutions for this as well.
Oculus has it’s own Loading Splash screen that you can load. at least that’s something better than SteamVR’s Void.

@alllesss

Hi, did you have to do anything special to get the Splash Screen to work?
When I tried it was buggy and got me stuck in a black screen or very stuttery.

SteamVR supports full stereo latlong maps as custom loading screens. Its just not expose to blueprint by default.

@Fredrum No I haven’t dived deep into it yet as it’s not the stage of development for me to test the solutions.
but generally, I would also suggest to consider fixing the issue by in your experience design. this breaks user’s immersion of course but if you prepare your User for this moment (loading) It makes it more convincing. (however you think is proper based on your content) so I believe almost half of the issue can be solved through design.

@mordentral Thanks! really good to know that.