The real world blows, and Sam Wall's looking for a way out. Lucky for him the virtual reality and escape room craze has plenty of options to choose from.
Historically speaking, to escape the endless drudgery of reality people needed a half decent imagination. With a sharp enough mind's eye any old stick can cut down dragons and 26 squiggly lines sufficiently jumbled can create universes. But this is 2018. Why play make-believe when technology is getting to the point that it can make you believe.
Out Of This World
If you're looking to leave the real world behind the most complete option is virtual reality, for the same reasons that it's the clunkiest. You need to be completely cut off from your surroundings, which means gear, and we're still working out the kinks there. A big one is the 'screen-door effect'. Basically, the definition needs to be insane because when your eyes are pressed right up against the screen you can see the fine lines between the pixels. Another is kit fit, since wearing a weighty, front-loaded headset for more than half an hour gets pretty uncomfortable. Neither things are great for immersion.
The VRace is on though. Finnish outfit Varjo have developed limited, vision-quality VR and if their hilariously supervillain-y demo video keeps its promises fuzzy digital adventures might be a thing of the past in the near future. HTC's latest, Vive Pro, has also made huge leaps on both issues (although the price tag is just not on).
Belaying those costs VR arcades have been steadily increasing around the world, providing somewhere to blast 3D zombies without dropping a grand or more on maturing technology. The prime example is (of course) in Japan - Shinjuku's VR Zone. As yet it's the only place in the world where you can fire Kamehameha blasts at Dragon Ball Z characters, pilot an Evangelion EVA against an Angel and physically sling shells at your friends in Mario Kart - also making it the best place in the world.
Twisted Vision
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Augmented reality takes a different, but still time-tested, method of innovation: Find something that already works and tack the new shit on top. We don't re-invent the wheel every time we design a new car, so why create an entire digital universe to house your fantasies when you can layer them on the mostly functional analog one we have.
And people definitely respond to it. When Pokemon Go was released it famously doubled Nintendo's stock value in just over a week, despite actually being developed by Niantic, because as anyone who quietly thought an owl might drop them a letter when they turned 11 can tell you, people want their favourite stories to be real.
It's cheaper, easier and can work through your phone, so Google and Apple are all over it. They've both created open platforms for "building augmented-reality experiences", with ARCore and ARKit 2 respectively.
The first apps to come out of them were from brands, 'cause even Bill's gotta pay the bills. You can now digitally place IKEA furniture around your house to see how it looks before ordering (still pretty cool), and Lego AR Studio lets people interact with their block creations by populating them with chatty little Lego folk and missile-firing mechs.
Other people are using it to make all manner of games and Apps available. ARise is an MC Escher-esque puzzle game that places a labyrinth on any flat surface — you then use perspective to guide a little adventurer through it — and AR Dragon has taken Tamagotchis to their logical conclusion by giving people a pet Spyro to feed and play with.
Get In To Get Out
While brains are dorks that believe any old information we feed them, bodies can be a bit tricker. Haptic equipment like vests and gloves that give physical sensation to virtual actions are bridging the gap. Seattle-based Haptx's glove has 120 reactive microfluidic bladders in the palm alone, so you can feel individual raindrops on your hand in-game, and a finely tuned resistive exoskeleton that means when you pick something up it has weight.
They're bulky as all hell though, not readily available and, again, wildly expensive. Digitally augmenting a physical location is just more realistic at this point, and escape rooms are on to it - incorporating elements of V and AR to better trip up your sense of disbelief. While still heaps of fun, your garden-variety escape room can be kind of 'Adult Cluedo', boiling down to rummaging around a themed room for the combinations to bike locks.
Others, like Strike's The Old Haunt room, up the atmosphere. Thunder cracks over the speakers and rain spatters against the LED 'window' where you can see a storm raging in the night. The latest space to open in Melbourne has gone a step further. Built by Ukiyo Melbourne, Kuebiko: The Crumbling Prince mixes a Miyazaki aesthetic and Legend Of Zelda puzzles with beautifully constructed masks that interact with the environment through built-in lighting and 3D holophonics. It's a Wizard Of Oz solution, really, but if you enjoy the ride then why pull back the curtain?
