Pornography often helps to drive new technology into the mainstream. Everyone knows that. In fact, by now the point has become rote. It’s the sort of thing that needlessly contrarian dinner party guests routinely trot out 20 minutes before embarking upon trickier subjects like “Hitler had some good ideas” and “Female drivers, eh?”

Still, an element of truth remains. Print, film, video, the internet, ebook readers – they’ve all been given a tremendous boost by their ability to show or describe sexual practises to the public. However, now that I’ve been forced to experience porn on the next wave of popular technology – lightweight virtual reality units Oculus Rift and Sony’s Project Morpheus – I think we might be selling it short by calling it a catalyst for popularity. In fact, VR porn might even bring about a new era of world peace.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The reason I agreed to road test this fountain of muck had nothing to do with porn and everything to do with virtual reality. Ever since the huge – and, retrospectively, quite rubbish – Virtuality units became popular in the 1990s, I’ve been desperate to lose myself in a virtual world. And, if anything, the berserk – and, retrospectively, quite rubbish –1992 film The Lawnmower Man just compounded that desire.

“That bloody film set the industry back decades,” says Sam, rolling his eyes. Sam is a VR producer who creates virtual reality games and military tools. He’s agreed to show me some VR porn, even though he keeps going to great pains to explain that he doesn’t make porn, that he only sourced the porn as a favour for the Guardian and that he really doesn’t want me to name his company in print just in case anyone gets the wrong idea.



Sam’s brought along a range of porn, ranging from the silly to the hardcore. He sits me down in an office chair, attaches the display unit to my head, quietly mentions something about motion sickness and revs up the first demo.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘It was entirely passive, like a cross between Boxing Helena and locked-in syndrome’ Photograph: The Guardian

It’s a desk. That’s it. A desk with a lamp, a plant and a pyramid of cards on it. It’s a taster designed to get me used to VR before we delve into any sexy stuff, but it’s immediately the most immersive piece of software I’ve ever tried. My sense of space feels entirely grounded in reality. Bend down and you’ll see the underside of the table. Look up into the lamp and you’ll see the screw cap of the lightbulb. It’s astonishing how quickly I lose myself in the scene. However, it isn’t remotely sexy.

I edged around the room like a terrified matador trapped in a ring with a loose bull

But it’s much sexier than the first porn experience Sam loads up. Alien Makeout Simulator is a game where you have to kiss a cocktail-swigging alien on all of its many mouths before the time runs out. It’s like one of those light-up Batak reaction games, except you use your face instead of your hands, and also it couldn’t be any less erotic if it were a game about picking slimy furballs from a plughole with your teeth. Worse still, I scored abysmally at it. My self-esteem isn’t great at the best of times, but it still stung to be told that I wasn’t even charismatic enough to cop off with an alcoholic extra-terrestrial who looks like the results page of a colon-cleanse website.

From there we tried some Asian animated porn in the form of Kurumi’s Bedroom, where a young woman thrashes away by herself on a bed. What you do with her is up to you. Quite naturally, I edged around the room like a terrified matador trapped in a ring with a loose bull for a few moments before running away. Manners cost nothing, and I didn’t want to intrude.

There was also something called VR Girl: Kayla, which was nothing more than a series of 3D-rendered statues of a porn actress in varying states of undress. Despite presumably being designed as a masturbatory aid, the whole thing felt airless and cold, like a museum exhibit. No matter how many times Sam enthusiastically hooted about the level of detail in the vaginal mapping, I remained profoundly unstirred by it. So far, this whole thing looked to be a dud. Virtual reality seemed about as likely to become the future of pornography as finding a Razzle in a binbag in the woods.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest VR Girl: Kayla felt airless and cold Photograph: The Guardian



But then things got a little more promising.

Technolust: A Way Out isn’t pornographic in any way, but it is a sign of what can happen when care is taken with VR experiences. In Technolust, you’re trapped in a room with a female hacker, and you have to try and escape. It’s a rich, ornately-detailed scene that’s clearly had a lot of time and money lavished upon it.

Glance up at faces, down at genitals. Or, if you’re me, you can hold your head as far away from the action as possible

The hacker’s face in particular is so realistic that, when I got close enough to look her in the eyes, I felt something brand new, something I’d never felt with either pornography or videogames: I felt intimacy. It’s a profoundly odd sensation to feel emotional closeness to a videogame character, but it points to an interesting future of the medium.

Then again, the future of the medium may just be loads of videos of people shagging. That’s how my testing session ended, with three films produced by Virtual Real Porn. In the first scene, you float above a couple obliviously banging away. But because it was shot with a 180-degree camera, you’re free to look around. You can glance up at faces, you can glance down at genitals. Or, if you’re me, you can hold your head as far away from the action as possible, and try to avoid acknowledging that any of it is actually happening.

The second puts you in the body of a man being pleasured by a woman. This was just as weird because, whenever you looked down at your own lap, you saw someone else’s penis jutting out. And all you could do was watch. There was no sensation, no manipulation. It was entirely passive, like a cross between Boxing Helena and locked-in syndrome.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Adrian (left) looming aggressively over Stuart Photograph: The Guardian

The real game-changer, though, was something that I hadn’t even anticipated. It came in the form of the third film, in which – unusually for the male-fixated world of porn – you’re placed into a woman’s body. For a moment you’re alone on a sun lounger, gazing around innocently at your surroundings. Then, into frame, walks a man who I believe is called Adrian. He pulls your knickers off, performs cunnilingus on you and then engages you in penetrative sex. Which, to say the least, is unsettling.

Because Adrian, bless him, was being terribly aggressive. Looking down at where it was all happening wasn’t really working for me – it was a bit too much like watching a 1950s time and motion government film about schnitzel production – so instead I looked up. That was even worse, because Adrian was looming over me and refusing to break eye contact. It was so unpleasant that, at the end, when he pulled out his penis to ejaculate on my belly, I shrieked and all but flung myself off my real-life chair in an attempt to dodge the splodge.

In that moment, I realised why men get such a bad rap … By the end of it, I pretty much hated men as well

And, in that moment, I broke through and realised why men get such a bad rap. If that’s what a heterosexual woman sees when she has sex – a mess of veins and anger and dumbly moronic facial expressions, uselessly bobbing up and down three inches from your face – then it’s perfectly understandable for them to hate men. By the end of it, I pretty much hated men as well.

This is why I think VR porn may serve a greater purpose. If everyone sat down, popped some goggles on and saw what it was like for someone of a different gender or sexuality to have sex, our shared empathy would go through the roof. At the next G8 summit, in fact, Cameron and Obama and Putin should all experience first-hand how gruesome it is to be humped by a horny bloke. Mark my words, there’d be unilateral nuclear disarmament by teatime.

I’m not sure what to make of my dabble with virtual-reality porn. For the time being – mainly thanks to all the cartoons – it all seems a bit niche, like it’s been designed by one lonely man with a very specific and vaguely unpleasant set of peccadilloes.

Perhaps it’ll take off more meaningfully once it’s matured a little. Perhaps an equivalent to I Modi or Fifty Shades of Grey or the Pamela Anderson sex tape will come along and thrust it into the limelight, and all the streets will fall dead because everyone will be stuck at home manically abusing themselves with a pair of goggles strapped to their face.

If not? Well, at least Adrian gave it his best shot.