When I arrived, AVN CEO Tony Rios greeted me and quickly assured me that despite what I might have heard, the show was bigger and better than ever. He took us up to the "Real World" suite, where a 2011 season of the MTV show was shot. As we walked the halls, Rios hinted at the party that had happened there the night before. The suite had an AVN-branded bowling lane and a giant, raised en-suite bath. I had the strange sensation of being on the defunct set of an MTV reality show now serving as the late-night playground for porn's biggest stars.

Wild nights aside, Rios showed no signs of fatigue as he defended the industry and the event. Not only was he expecting a record 25,000 attendees, but the Hard Rock had also built an entire new wing specifically for AVN's adult-novelty exhibitors.

That might come as a surprise for those who've followed porn's recent history. After the stock-market crash of 2008, reports of the industry's demise became commonplace. A mix of a weakened economy, the growth of free tube sites, and an ongoing battle with online piracy crippled the Hollywood-style studio system of the '70s, '80s and '90s.

According to Rios, reports of porn's death were premature. All I had to do was hit the show floor to see that the industry had evolved. It was now more nimble, diverse and technologically advanced than ever.

"We're going to continue to see huge growth in cams, and I'm excited to see what happens with VR," Rios said. "It's still in its infancy and, you know, a lot people think they know what's going to happen, but I've been around long enough—you just have to wait and see what actually bubbles up to the top."

That "see what bubbles up" approach is why I was at AEE to begin with. The holographic cam girl is one of a series of often-bizarre experiments to come out of CamSoda's labs. CamSoda is a relatively new startup in an established and booming segment of adult entertainment focused on connecting users to entertainers through live video and chat. Like Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook, porn's new heavyweights aren't content creators first but social-networking platforms.

And like their mainstream counterparts, CamSoda realizes iteration is key. In the space of a year, it introduced live 360-degree sex shows, an "iTunes for blow jobs" and, most recently, OhRoma, a VR peripheral that lets you smell your porn. In talking about the hologram and the company's more practical pursuit of 360-degree live video, CEO Daron Lundeen employs the Silicon Valley cliché, "fail fast, fail often."

"We're the site that's gonna experiment," Lundeen told me. "If you got a new idea, a new technology that's out there, we want to grab it, and try it, and use it."

Compared to other, more established cam sites, like AEE title sponsor MyFreeCams.com and Chaturbate, CamSoda's booth is relatively small, but no less kinetic. Women in plunging CamSoda-branded bathing suits line a horseshoe-shaped arrangement of tables. Some of the site's most successful models are here signing autographs and performing for audiences at home at the same time. To the right of the booth is a series of experiments from the CamSoda labs. The crown jewel, like some outsize precious stone, is an inverted, rotating glass pyramid that appears to have a tiny stripper trapped inside.