We all know that virtual reality is a long way from the finished article, but just when will truly immersive porn arrive, and what will it take for it to get here?

Here is renowned futorologist and inventor Ray Kurzweil (particularly famous for promoting the idea of the ‘Singularity’) discussing the future of virtual reality six years ago, when the only ‘VR’ available was virtual online worlds such as Second Life.

Notice that Kurzweil bypasses the stage of clunky VR headsets which we have now, and goes straight to the prediction of 3D images being beamed directly into the eye in 10 years (so 4 years from now). This is a prediction that might well be at least on its way to being realized if the long awaited and mysterious MagicLeap device is finally released in its promised form in that time (although at least initially intended to project ‘augmented reality’ images, not complete immersion). Microsoft has similar ambitions with the HoloLens, and is currently marketing ‘Mixed Reality’ headsets that are in their first iteration primarily virtual reality, but likely are intended to evolve into headsets/glasses that can create holographic virtual worlds that are completely immersive (VR) or ‘mixed’ with our real world as in 3D augmented reality.

By 2030 or so, Kurzweil believes that nanobots – tiny robots the size of microorganisms – will be swimming about in our blood system directly stimulating our nervous system and brain in order to produce a truly immersive virtual reality that is indistinguishable from our real world. Although this sounds outlandish, Elon Musk recently delivered on a promise made last year to set up a company to create a ‘neural lace’ that would incorporate nanotechnology in order to directly link human brains to computers. If this gets off the ground quickly, its safety and its benefits established in the near term with a growing commercial market, then 2030 doesn’t seem outlandish a time frame at all. Certainly, CGI graphics are rapidly reaching the point of photorealism :

Of course, such images are in 2D, and creating photorealistic holograms for augmented reality headsets such as the HoloLens isn’t so easy. However, with rapid advances in 3D scanning, even that could soon become easy enough for anyone with a smartphone to accomplish.

The Light-Field technology that MagicLeap supposedly utilizes will soon be the tech that creates realistic virtual reality worlds. Virtual reality currently uses the same 3D stereoscopic tech used in the failed 3D TVs, with the added immersion of 180/360 degree head tracking. Light-Field tech VR will be on a completely different level of realism, not only looking just like our real 3D world, but enabling us to move about inside it.

The final piece of the immersive jigsaw is fooling the brain into actually feeling that what it is experiencing is real. Of course, with the immersive technology described above, virtual reality will be incredibly real, visually and even tactiley indistinguishable from real life. But the person experiencing it will still be aware that it is not ‘real’ and that he is experiencing a virtual reality, in the same way that a person reading a novel, no matter how engrossed in it he becomes, is still aware to a greater or lesser extent that he is only reading a book. However scientists are improving their understanding of the neural processes involved in the ‘suspension of disbelief’ that can occur when we are most absorbed and lost in a novel or a great movie. They are beginning to understand how the brain differentiates between fiction and reality.

Most people can easily tell the difference between reality and fantasy. We know that characters in novels and movies are fictitious, and we also understand that historical figures – even if we’ve never met them personally – were real people. As obvious as this distinction may seem, however, scientists know very little about the specific brain mechanisms that are responsible for our ability to distinguish between real and fictional events. Recently, research has identified two areas of the brain that are more strongly activated when people see real characters than when they see fictional characters. These brain regions – in the anterior medial prefrontal and posterior cingulated cortices (amPFC and PCC) – are known to be involved during autobiographical memory retrieval and self-referential thinking. Based on this finding, scientists have hypothesized that our brains may distinguish between reality and fantasy because real things tend to have a higher degree of personal relevance than fictional things do.

This opens the possibility of a person in virtual (or augmented) reality having their suspension of disbelief manipulated in order for him to believe entirely that he really is in the virtual world he is experiencing, that the characters are real, and that what is happening to him is really happening – whether that be zombies attacking or the most perfect girl of his dreams sucking his penis whilst looking into his eyes with an expression of total devotion and love. This could be through self-voluntary choice (before immersing himself in the virtual world – imagine the ethical issues regarding ‘prior consent’ as relates porn and virtual sex!) or through involuntary Matrix style deceit by other agents.

To conclude, truly immersive VR porn requires two essential ingredients :

1 # Photo-realistic 3D ‘holographic’ virtual worlds.

2 # The belief that what is happening is real.

In my opinion it might not be necessary to have neural laces or nano-robots running around our nervous systems before we reach this stage. With photorealistic holographic images being beamed directly into our eyes AND perhaps simply drugs that target the brain chemistry that lead us to see something as real or unreal, this might be sufficient for us to step into worlds that are as ‘real’ as reality.

So what is ‘Immersive Porn’ and why the title of this blog?

So this brings me to a final thought as to why I chose the title of this blog and what it means regarding the future of sex tech that we’re exploring here. According to Wikipedia, ‘porn is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purpose of sexual arousal’. In my opion, ‘immersive porn’ is the portrayal of sexual subject matter that is indistinguishable from reality for the purposes of sexual arousal’. A world of immersive porn – and this is where we are heading barring global catastrophy such as nuclear war or global puritanical government – is a sexual utopia in which every man and woman can seek sexual satisfaction in a way that is better than any theoretical sex life in a real world (ie. a Genghis Khan with thousands of the most beautiful virgin maidens to choose from). This can go beyond what we mean today by virtual reality, incorporate aspects of it, or be something completely different. For example, sex with a robot is often objected to as being never as good as the real thing, because the robot is not conscious. But what if the person having sex with the robot believed the sexbot was a real human? Or what if the robot was a teledildonic / telepresence humanoid device that was actually enabling remote sex with a real human, perhaps in the authentic form of the human individual ‘at the other end’, perhaps an enhanced form, or perhaps nothing like (or even the gender, race etc.)?

But these thoughts will be explored in another article…