Virtual Reality Porn Could Change Your Perception of Sex

Luke Brookes / © Culture Trip

Virtual reality porn puts users right in the middle of a sex scene. Or to the right of it. Or to the left. You can even watch it from the viewpoint of one of the performers. The technology is reaching a point where experiencing immersive porn from a certain point of view could change the way you view sex forever.

Virtual reality porn is still a fledgling industry, and the technology, although improving, is still in its early stages. Although the decreasing cost of virtual reality headsets and immersive video capture technology has made VR porn cheaper to make and easier to consume, the days of Matrix-style sex are not here yet.

But it is growing. One report by analysts at Piper Jaffray estimates porn and virtual reality will be a $1 billion business by 2025, and the third largest sector in VR behind video games and NFL-related content. Even tracking Google searches for the term VR porn shows the increase in interest by web users.

Taking pornography into another world opens a whole host of possibilities, some of which many porn users have never even contemplated. A virtual reality world allows users to view porn from the perspective of a woman, for example, and briefly sample a change in gender without the unfair pressures of society. Users are also able to try out more exotic sexual tastes without judgment or risk.

A VR porn scene. Courtesy Naughty America

One of the porn industry’s major problems is its lack of diversity, according to Make Love Not Porn CEO and Founder Cindy Gallop, and VR has the potential to compensate for that.

“Porn is like any other industry, it’s dominated at the top by a closed loop of white guys talking to white guys about other white guys. Porn is shot through the male lens, it mistakenly thinks the only market is male, and that dramatically impacts the porn that we watch as women,” Gallop says in an interview.

Make Love Not Porn features videos of real world sex – not porn. The aim is to build a new category of ‘social sex’, so that porn is not the only source of sex education for most people.

Virtual reality holds the key to making porn more socially beneficial, according to Gallop. “VR is the first form of technology to deliver something that no other technology ever has, which is empathy. VR enables you to quite literally put yourself in someone else’s shoes.”

Gallop cites a 2011 blog post by sex educator Charlie Glickman, which says the practice of pegging, where a female partner in a straight relationship anally penetrates the male, gives men a new level of empathy for women. “You suddenly realize why we as women have to be in the mood, why we have to be turned on, why we have to be receptive and why we have to have key emotional dynamics like trust at play. The point being that you develop empathy for what sex is like for a woman in a way you would never have otherwise. That is a colossal benefit when it comes to VR real world sex,” says Gallop.

Cindy Gallop at Big Omaha © Silicon Prairie News/Flickr

Gallop hopes to build a virtual reality section of Make Love Not Porn, and continue its quest to educate people on sex through entertainment. However, the company needs a new round of funding to do so.

Kitty Stryker is a porn performer and sex educator, and is about to embark on producing her first virtual reality porn project – a 1984-themed porn parody. Stryker aims to make more artsy porn, and is excited by the possibilities of virtual reality in the industry, particularly in the way women are represented and how their porn preferences are catered to.

“It’s such an interesting realm to get into. The way it’s created right now is that it assumes the person wants to be a male. But some men want to be in the position of a woman. And women are making up more and more of the consumer base,” she says by phone.

“As a queer porn performer, it would give me an opportunity to represent a gender that I don’t identify as in normal life,” she adds.

When people do change their porn viewpoint, the results can be interesting. Ela Darling, head of CAM4VR and self-proclaimed VR porn queen, has seen this first hand. “I’ve had guy friends who have tried VR porn from the perspective of a female and its changed their attitude to sex,” she says via phone.

A VR scene from the male point of view. Courtesy Naughty America.

Darling’s title is not underserved, she shot the first holographic porn and was the first porn performer to offer a virtual reality cam girl experience, where users pay for a 1-on-1 private show in virtual reality. She got into virtual reality porn two and half years ago, through slightly unconventional means. “I saw someone post on Reddit about wanting to shoot VR porn, but they didn’t have performers.”

Darling answered the request, and discovered that the would-be porn producer was still in college. Undeterred, she shot her first VR porn in his dorm room.

The process of shooting virtual reality porn can differ greatly from 2D porn. “It’s more like a stage production,” says Darling. “As a director you have to reimagine the way you create content.” When shooting 360-degree videos, the director or producer can’t be in the room with the performer, which was unfamiliar territory for Darling when she first started out in VR. “I just had to wing it and find out. Your focus is on the camera, it’s first person and no edits.”

This close connection to the camera makes for a more intimate shoot, Darling says. “I feel more engaged. When I webcam in VR I feel more connected to the user, I dominate their attention.” Darling also explains how virtual reality nurtures a respectful attitude from the user during live webcam shows, as its like the user has entered into her bedroom or the shooting location and is able to look around. Again, the sense of empathy that comes with virtual reality makes for a more understanding interaction.

Performers like Darling and Stryker aren’t the only ones who see a bright future in virtual reality. Major production companies have already branched out into VR, including Naughty America, one of the largest porn producers in America.

Naughty America's VR promotional material Courtesy Naughty America.

Naughty America shot its first virtual reality porn in July 2015, and now has over 60 scenes available. Ian Paul, CIO at Naughty America, tells me via phone that the company has been experimenting with virtual reality videos from the female point of view, and describes it as “certainly eye-opening”.

Naughty America only produces 180-degree videos, as “you don’t really want to look behind you,” according to Paul. The company is constantly looking for the next breakthrough piece of technology in the porn industry, but doesn’t think introducing interactive elements to virtual reality porn will prove successful.

“Interactive porn didn’t work in 2D, so I don’t think it’ll work in VR,” Paul says. “The future is automatically detecting your preferences and adapting the experience to them. Imagine you’re looking at a crowd and the technology tracks which person captures your gaze. And then they come over and talk to you.”

Immersive porn experiences come with negatives as well as positives. One of the major concerns is how a new type of pornography could affect relationships. Porn can be a thorny issue in a relationship, particularly when one partner uses it and another doesn’t.

Rhonda Milrad, founder and chief relationship adviser of Relationup, a real time anonymous relationship advice app, says that viewing porn is often kept secret and done when a partner is out of the house. She says virtual reality porn could accentuate this, and would certainly make for a more embarrassing incident if the partner returns home unannounced to find their loved one thrashing around with a VR headset on.

“Virtual reality is much more interactive so it will create two problems,” says Milrad. “The line is blurred whether [the partner is] with someone else. I think it will create circumstances where people will feel betrayed. It will also ramp up the addiction to porn. Pornography is addictive already, so how real it feels and how satisfying it feels will be really addictive.”

A 360 degree VR camera setup. betto rodrigues / Shutterstock.com

Stryker thinks virtual reality porn also has the potential to make people think they are experts in certain sexual activities. “Just because you were in a VR porn with fisting in it, you’re not an expert in fisting. You could really fuck someone up,” she says.