In 2014 our lab started putting multiple people in free-roaming VR in the same room, and gave them shared activities like drawing in the air together in 3D. There was no equipment at the time that would support this, so we cobbled together our own technology using an OptiTrack motion capture system, GearVRs and WiiMotes (so people could press buttons on hand-held controllers).
Over the next few years we demonstrated this system at various conferences, such as Siggraph 2015. One of the places we showed it was the 2016 FMX conference in Stuttgart Germany.
We brought with us a PC, an OptiTrack system, three GearVR headsets and three WiiMotes. The idea was that three people at a time could hang out together and collaboratively draw in the air in VR. It was supposed to run for three days.
On the morning of the second day, disaster struck. One of the WiiMotes stopped working. Since we were far from home, there was no way to replace it in time.
Practically, this meant that one of the three people would have no way to draw in the air. We thought the experience would be severely compromised, and were debating whether to reduce it to only two people or else to shut it down altogether.
But in the end we decided to go on for the next two days with a system that supported three participants but only two controllers. To our surprise, the experience suddenly got a lot better.
The participants started to share their controllers back an forth. Everyone was very generous, and would help out the others, making sure everyone got enough time drawing in the air.
We had accidentally discovered generosity in VR. It was a very happy accident.