\n Charlie Cochrane is a solo VR dev running Crooks Peak studio. With a background in robotics, programming, and a cookie delivery company, he started making hobby VR games in 2016 and went full time in 2021. His sci-fi action horror game \u2018By Grit Alone<\/a>\u2018 released winter 2024, and the upcoming Victorian zombie train sim \u2018Full Steam Undead<\/a>\u2018 is due Spring 2026, both available on Meta Quest and Steam.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n A loading bar in VR doesn\u2019t just pause the game; it teleports the player to a disorienting black void, completely breaking the sense of \u2018presence\u2019.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a problem I took as a core design pillar for my previous game, By Grit Alone<\/a>, and my upcoming title Full Steam Undead<\/a>. Both feature a ~4 hour campaign with a hard rule: zero loading screens and no framerate stutters.<\/p>\n In this article, I\u2019ll share some of the high-level techniques, from technical wizardry to deceptive tricks, that developers use to minimize or hide loading entirely. The reader should come away with a new appreciation for these invisible systems and a better understanding of why there are so many elevator scenes in games.<\/p>\n The Background Load (Streaming)<\/p>\n The best loads are the ones players don\u2019t even realise are happening. Enter \u2018Asset Streaming\u2019; the goal here is to load the game\u2019s assets (models, textures, sounds) in small chunks in the background before they are needed, rather than all at once in a single, game-halting block.<\/p>\n This can be tricky, as the game needs to predict what needs loading and when, so that it\u2019s ready and preloaded at the moment it\u2019s required. It\u2019s a careful balancing act; if you preload too much then you\u2019ll eat up all the memory, while not enough and you may be caught out needing unloaded assets. This can be extra tricky in VR, where memory and processing power can be tight on standalone systems and even the shortest blocking load can cause a noticeable stutter.<\/p>\n Asset streaming can be as simple as loading an MP3 audio file a few seconds before it needs to play. In By Grit Alone, each time you get an NPC radio message, I play a little radio static buzz at the start of the call. This two second clip frames the call nicely, but also buys me two seconds to load the actual message in the background!<\/p>\n A more complex but common example; chunking up a large open world map and loading\/unloading those chunks depending on the player\u2019s location and view direction. Asgard\u2019s Wrath 2 is a lovely example of this; done properly the player is able to ride around the massive map without a loading bar in sight. Done poorly and the player will see parts of the world or enemies teleporting in and out of the game.<\/p>\n The Hidden Load (Deception)<\/p>\n Asset Steaming is great, but even then, sometimes the engine just needs more time or memory. For example: the player is moving from one massive area to another, and the new area is too big to be streamed in \u2018invisibly\u2019 without first removing the old.<\/p>\n Enter \u2018The Elevator\u2019. The player steps in, presses a button, and is forced to wait as they slowly ascend or descend, perhaps while NPCs chat or some stuffy elevator music plays. That (often unskippable) ride is a loading screen in disguise. By placing the player in a small space, the engine can unload the previous scene, free up the memory and then load in the new scene, while the ride gives the engine time to do this in the background.<\/p>\n Of course the elevator is just one example, but once you know what to look for, you\u2019ll see these hidden loads everywhere:<\/p>\n These aren\u2019t lazy designs, they are non-intrusive solutions to keep player interactivity in the world, while giving the engine the time and resources to perform loading in the background.<\/p>\n The \u2018Pause\u2019 as a Load (Diegetic UIs)<\/p>\n Opinion alert: good VR design integrates UI into the world as a core part of maintaining presence. To me, a pause menu that unnecessarily teleports you out of the game is just as bad as another loading screen. Excellent VR examples of putting menu components into the game world include:<\/p>\n In Cosmodread, an updating map of the spooky ship is wrist mounted and always glanceable:<\/p>\n In Into The Radius, you manage your inventory by pulling items out of a physical backpack rather than an inventory menu:<\/p>\n All of these avoid the \u2018pause\u2019 and keep the player in the world. Even better, in doing these actions without pausing, the player may be looking over their shoulder when doing so, aware that their environment might not care if they are stopping to check their bag or map.<\/p>\n The \u2018Failure\u2019 Load (Instant Resets)<\/p>\n It can be very hard to hide failure (sorry mum), but hiding a load on failure? That we can do!<\/p>\n In a challenging, restart-heavy VR game, failure can be part of the learning loop. Think of Beat Saber or Pistol Whip;\u00a0having to wait 10 seconds for a \u2018Reloading Checkpoint\u2019 between every reset would completely kill the flow.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/roadtovrlive-5ea0.kxcdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Headshot.jpg\")
<\/a>Guest Article by\u00a0Charlie Cochrane<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>That long elevator ride isn\u2019t just for dramatic tension. It\u2019s one of the most common and effective ways to \u2018mask\u2019 the loading of an entirely new, complex environment.<\/p>\n\n
<\/a>In The Lab, you load a level by pulling an orb onto your head rather than using a menu of listed levels:<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n