A Collaborative Virtual Reality Escape Room with Passive Haptics

Escape rooms have recently become a popular way to socialize and problem solve in an immersive environment. However, it can be difficult and expensive to create elaborate escape rooms with realistic props. Virtual reality (VR) technology allows developers to create and customize escape rooms more easily. However, to truly make the VR escape room immersive, physical and cooperative interactions are necessary. In this paper, the authors propose and demonstrate a two-player VR escape room developed for the HTC Vive. Physical interactions were made possible by using passive haptics in the form of simple props tracked using HTC Vive trackers and controllers. Additionally, the HTC Vives were networked, and players hands were tracked using the Leap Motion to provide head and hand position cues to teammates.