Virtual reality porn and the future of loneliness

I was an adolescent in the mid-90’s when I stumbled on to an early virtual reality demo in, of all places, the old Quad mall in Makati. The name of the company putting on the show is lost in time at this point, but it was impossible to miss their setup. Their VR rig was massive: folks who wanted to try it had to stand on a circular treadmill that allowed them to walk in place in all directions, and wore a harness that prevented them from falling off. It looked like something jury-rigged by human rebels in a robot-controlled future, and there was a queue of buzzing adolescents waiting to give it a go.

When it was finally my turn, I found that the helmet was as heavy as a television set, and the dual CRT displays hurt my eyes. Thick black cables snaked out from behind my head and connected to the computer workstation that rendered the video and audio. One of those cables connected to a plastic gun that allowed me to aim and shoot at various virtual things.

After about 30 seconds of “walking around” and reducing nondescript flying objects into their component pixels, I felt like throwing up. The technology hadn’t gotten to the point where the tiny screens could refresh fast enough for my eyes to be even partially deceived by what they were seeing. No amount of suspension of disbelief would allow me to forget that I was really staring at two postage-stamp-sized monitors half an inch away from my retinas.

VR in your pocket

Virtual reality as a concept has existed in science fiction as far back as the 1940’s, but it’s only been in the last 5 years that it’s come within reach of average consumers. At the forefront of this revolution was Oculus, a young startup that envisioned a VR headset for the home that was affordable enough for average consumers, and was bought by Facebook for $2 billion in 2014.

Yesterday, I put on a Samsung Galaxy Gear VR running Oculus software for the first time, which came free with my mobile contract, and costs around P5,000 ($108) when bought separately.

The Gear VR is a set of plastic stereoscopic goggles that you strap on to your head and then attach your Galaxy smartphone to the front of. The Gear VR itself has no display, the smartphone – now powerful enough to replace that monster workstation from my youth – generates the entire audiovisual experience.

It’s quite frankly a brilliant idea. While more robust systems must be powered by full computers (the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive) or dedicated consoles (Sony’s PlayStation VR), mobile devices like the Gear VR and LG’s 360 VR can be thrown into your bag and theoretically used anywhere.

With the headset firmly strapped to my forehead, I did the first thing that came to mind while sitting quietly by myself in the Single Origin cafe in BGC: I visited PornHub.com.

The secret to tech adoption

It’s an enduring adage in tech that there is no greater force driving the adoption of new video innovations than the adult film industry.

“Whenever there’s a shift in content conception, it’s typically adult entertainment that’s the first monetizable app. History repeats itself and we’ve seen adult entertainment drive sales of VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, high definition, mobile, and online video over the years,” said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray.

Pundits have gone so far as to say that Sony’s PlayStationVR effort will fail if it doesn’t allow adult content on to its platform, in the same way as its Betamax initiative ultimately failed in the 80’s. (The pioneering Oculus Rift allowed the adult film industry to begin producing content for its platform as far back as 2014.)

Strategically, it makes a lot of sense: new technologies tend to be expensive for businesses to develop, and equally expensive for early customers to adopt. But pornographic content tends to always be priced higher than its mainstream counterparts, so it has the effect of filling in that initial dearth of sweaty buyers with excitable credit cards.

Consider: the average video game nets its producers a one-time sale amounting to $60, whereas the average porn subscription is $30 a month in continuous revenue.

Thus, the porn industry is all over virtual reality. Leading the charge are established names like Kink.com and Naughty America, and young upstarts like the unfortunately-named BaDoinkVR.

It’s an obvious evolution to a viewing experience that has been largely unchanged since the stag films of the early 1900’s. Why settle for the impotent detachment of spectatorship, when you could take control of the action? Granted, the amount of control you can currently exercise is fairly limited, especially when you’re on a mobile rig. You don’t have any input apart from the angle of your gaze, and you can’t yet live your porn director fantasies by walking around a scene as it unfolds.

A physics problem

The biggest hurdle, in this writer’s opinion, is the mechanics of the production itself. Most VR porn available today follows the same general methodology: a male proxy is lying down (on a bed, a picnic blanket, a faux leather sofa), and the viewer sees everything that he sees. In this supine position, you don’t expect to move around much, so when the female actor enters the scene you passively lie there and let her do most of the busywork. For obvious reasons, you never see the proxy’s face (or even hear his voice, in some cases).

It’s not a limitation of the VR technology per se, but the cameras required to film it. Even as DSLRs have gotten smaller over the years, you still need to mount a pair of them side by side in order to record both the left and right eye views, which is how the 3D effect is achieved. (If you wanted a full 360-degree view of the proceedings, then you’ll need a special rig with at least 8 lens pointing in all directions.) The setup is cumbersome enough that the actor can’t even change positions without the film crew pausing the shoot and rejigging everything.

These constraints mean that your average porn scene is limited to just a handful of situations, although as the capture technology continues to improve, I expect that the experience will also become more robust.

Log off to log on

Will the viewer want to wear this headgear to watch [VR porn]?” wonders Nick Melilo, a veteran adult film director who has crossed over to the virtual reality sub-genre. “A lot of couples enjoy watching porn together, so this takes that out of the equation.”

Virtual reality is the closest we’ve yet come to fully immersing ourselves in an experience, and the flipside is that it’s also the most isolated we can currently be from other people. There’s no way to share your VR experience with someone in the same way that you can show off a game on an iPad, or listen to music over the car stereo. When you sit next to someone with a headset on, they are no longer there with you. VR users disconnect themselves from the outside world as they boot into the virtual one.

Does it represent the future of (anti-)socialization? Many a cyberpunk novel (recently, Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, but seminally, William Gibson’s Neuromancer) have imagined futures wherein people who otherwise live in squalor have chosen to spend all of their waking moments plugged in to virtual worlds.

When we’re plugged in, will we spend our time socialzing with our friends in the same way that we do right now through Facebook or Snapchat? Perhaps. Long-distance relationships will probably get a boost by combining VR cameras and remotely controlled sex toys like Vibease.

But it’s also just as likely that we’ll find easier friendships struck up with virtual characters that have been programmed to be our friends. We’re already seeing the prototypal versions of this idea manifesting with the Japanese virtual girlfriend phenomenon, and the occasional sex doll marriage. It is only a matter of time before these unconventional interests converge around virtual reality, and perhaps even reach a wider audience once the artifice has been more effectively concealed.

Granted, the quality of the immersion still leaves much to be desired, but the road ahead no longer requires a revolution, but a straightforward series of iterations. Faster graphics processors, smaller headsets, better cameras, more affordable price points – all of these things can happen now that the initial chasm has been crossed. With the adult industry providing the early commercial muscle necessary to penetrate the mainstream, these improvements will happen at an accelerated clip.

The stuff of daydreams

For now, VR porn is still unrefined in its approach, and fairly limited in its interactivity. To borrow parlance from the video game industry, it’s porn “on rails.” But even that feels light years ahead of watching pornography in two dimensions on the small screen. The goggles come on, the everything goes dark, and when the lights come back up, you’re there.

You look down, and see the torso and appendages of a male proxy – your avatar. You look around, and see that you’re sitting behind a heavy oak desk, and classes have just ended for the day. You’ve just told a blonde cheerleader that you’ve given her an F on her homework, and if she doesn’t raise her grades, they’ll kick her off the squad. She leans forward, puts her hand on your thigh, and begs you to reconsider.

You’re in a nice house with high ceilings, marble floors, and an infinity pool out on the terrace. Your hot neighbor is at the door, she’s just dropped by to go for a swim on this sweltering summer day. “Is anyone else home?” she asks, as she throws off her tank. Of course, you say, “Nope, it’s just the two of us.”

You’re entering an inner city apartment, and your Latina tenant doesn’t have enough money to pay her rent this month. You’re wearing a suit and there’s an eviction notice in your hand. She doesn’t want to go back to living with her parents, ay dios mio, is there anything else she can do to pay you back?

Technology is nipping at the heels of our expansive imaginations, and we’re literally watching it happen before our very eyes. And although VR porn hasn’t quite caught up to the pubescent daydreams of jaded Internet columnists, one thing is certain: it’s definitely coming. – Rappler.com