The porn industry may have changed a lot in the digital age, but some things still live up to the stereotype. Like, say, this house in the San Fernando Valley, which is the nation’s capital of adult film production. From the outside, it doesn’t look all that different from the other million-dollar properties in this Los Angeles suburb.

Inside, it’s just another day at the office—if your business happens to be making adult films. At the moment, the statuesque naked woman on the four-poster bed in front of me is—and really, there’s no more polite way to say this, so bear with me—inserting a string of oversize beads into herself, while a naked guy stands next to the bed, a towel hanging from his erect penis.

But August Ames and Tommy Gunn, as fans might know them, aren’t here simply to have sex on camera. If that were the case, then the VR camera rig in front of Gunn’s face wouldn’t be forcing him to lean back so far at the waist that he retires to a daybed in the corner to stretch between takes. (“My hip flexors are killing me,” he growls during one lull.)

Author Peter Rubin (@provenself) is platforms editor at WIRED and the author of Future Presence: How Virtual Reality Is Changing Human Connection, Intimacy, and the Limits of Ordinary Life, from which this article is excerpted. HarperOne

If Ames and Gunn were making conventional porn, then she might not be getting so close to the camera lenses, cooing into them as though they were a lover’s ears. If they were just making your standard wham-bam-thank-you-surgically-enhanced-ma’am porn, with three Xs but only two lousy dimensions, then the CEO of the company bankrolling this shoot might not be sitting downstairs, having flown here from Barcelona just to be around. And there definitely wouldn’t be a “clinical sexologist” overseeing the shoot, making sure that the action unfolds in accordance with maximum therapeutic value.

In Virtual Sexology, Ames uses the power of presence—the feeling that you're inside the movie—to create a sense of rapport. BadoinkVR

But this is VR porn—in which intimacy is the watchword, eye contact is everything, and studios are sensing money-making potential the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the internet came along and almost cratered the whole damn industry.

Welcome to sunny Encino. Please don’t step on the Ben Wa balls.

The Man Who Would Be (BaDoink) King

Todd Glider never meant to get into porn. Back in the mid-1990s, he was the living embodiment of the mid-1990s: a 20-something with an MFA (“pipe, tweed jacket, all that,” he says), living in San Francisco, making zines. Then his girlfriend got a job in Los Angeles, so he started looking for employment in Southern California. One of the listings he saw asked for an “HTML programmer.” He got the interview and the job, but “HTML programming” turned out to be “writing erotic copy for an online adult company.”

The job, Glider found, suited him fine—as did the adult industry as a whole. He became the creative director at that first company, then moved overseas to work in Europe. In 2010 he became CEO of a large “digital entertainment company,” which now serves as an umbrella over several smaller adult brands. One of those brands is BaDoinkVR, the studio creating the scene that’s being shot upstairs today.

In VR productions, the cameras are positioned very close to the performers. BadoinkVR

BaDoink—and by all means, take a moment to enjoy that glorious name—released its first VR porn scene in the summer of 2015; the company was profitable within a year. It’s gone from 10 employees to more than 90, a workforce that is “overwhelmingly coders,” Glider says, sitting in the living room of the Encino house. He’s sturdily built, with a shaved head and a gregarious mien, and is dressed like he’s heading onstage to talk to a crowd of tech developers: dark gray button-down, black pants, Apple Watch. That’s not unintentional. The way Glider sees it, VR has the potential not just to make porn profitable again, but to make the tech world respect the adult film industry. “This is the first time I feel like we’re leading in any way,” he says. “Silicon Valley left us in the dust, but now adult is carrying the torch.”