On July 24th, Escape Virtuality in NYC invited us to preview their brand new state of the art virtual reality and escape room experience!
Escape Virtuality is the newest spot in NYC that offers a wide range of virtual reality and escape room experiences. Located at 130W 29th St in NYC, the building stands out with its purple design.
Escape Virtuality Grand Opening!
Walking in, you notice all of the stations that are set up for different experiences. Each station uses either an HTC Vive or Oculus Rift headset and are powered by impressive PCs. For those interested, each system is running on a Ryzen 2700 8-core CPU and an Nvidia GTX 1070 GPU with 16Gb of RAM. These PCs are displayed prominently on the walls by the stations, each one fitted with RGB lighting and very cool and sleek Thermaltake cases.
One of the cool PCs powering the VR games.
Specs include an AMD Ryzen 2700, an Nvidia GTX 1070, and 16GBs of RAM
The virtual reality racing station with an interactive seat and steering wheel.
The first station I tried was the racing simulation. Here, a very realistic wheel and pedal system is used in tandem with an interactive seat that moves and reacts to the in-game car’s movements. The simulation it was running was Project Cars 2, a fairly accurate game when it comes to simulation racing. I raced three times throughout the event, the first was in a Pagani Hyura on the Oval at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the second was in an Enzo Ferrari at the Mazda Laguna Seca Raceway (now called Weathertech Raceway Laguna Seca), and the third time in a Dallara IR12 Chevrolet at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. The experience was great and everything was so realistic. As you turn your car around the infamous corkscrew at Laguna Seca, the wheel fights back as your tires struggle to find grip and the seat turns and jerks as you brake and swerve the car through the corners. As someone who normally places racing games with a normal controller on a regular screen, experiencing racing like this opened my eyes to how much I was really missing in the experience.
The next station I tried was the 1v1 shooter game. There, they had these curved platforms and harnesses that tracked your footsteps so that you could
The interactive VR simulation with the apparatus that allows you to walk around in game.
actually walk around in the game. It worked by sliding your feet back and forth in the direction you wanted to go in as if you were ice skating. You also had two controllers that track your hands in the game. With these two things working together, a friend and I were able to verse each other in a 1v1 shoot out in a battle arena, all in virtual reality! Admittedly, it was quite hard for me to get the hang of walking properly, but my friend was able to do it pretty well. I suppose it’s different for each person, but after a few attempts, it gets a lot easier.
The multi-sim virtual reality station with an interactive platform
The third station I tried was a multi-sim station. Here, there was a platform you stood on that was interactive. Depending on the game it would either simulation, for instance, a rollercoaster ride, mimicking the twists, turns, and drops that you see in VR. In other games, you can take control by leaning in different directions on the platform, allowing you to pilot a plane or ride a motorcycle. It was hard at first but you quickly get the hang of it. Some people weren’t a fan of this one because of motion sickness, but my friend and I were fine with it, but fair warning if you go.
The last station was a rock climbing wall. It was a white wall that had these obstacles projected onto it and the goal was to navigate the course without “touching” these obstacles. The way it knew if it touched you was by actually tracking your body as you moved along the course. In fact, if you beat the course, it would actually show you a projected replay of your run. This was by far the most popular station. We all watched as people tried to navigate fairly hard courses, only to get close to the end and fail. It was a lot of fun watching everyone try it and cheering them on, even my friend was able to complete a few of the courses!
Then, one of the employees took us on a tour of their escape rooms. They have four rooms and three different themes, a subway room, a spooky 19th-century room, and two spaceship rooms. Unlike other escape rooms I’ve been to, these were really amazing. The set design was fantastic and created a great atmosphere with some interesting puzzles. The subway room even moves and jostles around, simulating a real subway ride. While talking to the co-founder of Escape Virtuality, Neil, he said “We don’t want people to sit in a room and solve lame puzzles on a piece of paper. We want it to be an experience that is exciting and theatrical!” it definitely seems that they’ve achieved that here. Alongside these escape rooms, they also have virtual reality escape rooms, where several people can wear backpacks that contain computers so you can move around freely in the space. People can pick cool and wacky avatars so that everyone can see each other and their actual positions in the game.
The event was topped off by some great crepes by Eight Turn Crepes. I got myself a delicious Strawberry and Nutella crepe!
This was the grand opening of Escape Virtuality; a unique space with a focus on virtual reality and creating genuinely fun and exciting experiences. One thing that stood out to me above the rest were the employees. The employees are incredibly nice and friendly and are genuinely excited about the place. They have such a great attitude and were always helpful. Escape Virtuality is a great and fun place to experience and is open now- I highly recommend you go with your friends to check it out!
