Virtual reality porn is coming soon

By James Branson

PICTURE THIS: Instead of jerking off or rubbing one out under the sheets while your computer bobbles up and down on your lap, the future of masturbation might involve a virtual reality headset and numerous devices attached to your body (and your junk).

That’s the vision that two companies – Lovense (an ‘interactive’ sex toy manufacturer) and an X-rated site called VirtualRealPorn (should be obvious) – are hoping to make a reality.

The idea involves using virtual reality (VR) videos that have been coded to make sex toys work in sync with whatever action is appearing on the headset.

The companies are just two contenders in the race to turn porn and masturbation into a multi-sensory experience.

LOVENSE is one of the leading manufacturers of high-tech sex toys. Their site advertises two products that can be synced up together – ‘Max‘, a fleshlight-esque device that looks like it was made by Apple, and ‘Nora‘, which the company claims is the first vibrator that expands “the possibilities of online sex via wifi, 3G or a wired internet connection”.

The field of high-tech sex toys even has it’s own technical term: ‘teledildonics’, which is just downright hilarious and should be a strong contender for ‘word of the year‘.

“They can be controlled by your smartphone from across the street, across town, or even across the country,” Lovense states.

‘Max’ and ‘Nora’ work are advertised as a way for couples in long-distance relationships to say intimate. The toys can be synced up, and will react based on how their paired devices are moved.

Check out the a-little-bit-enticing-but-very-much-hilarious video demonstration here:

ALL THIS IS BASED ON THE ASSUMPTION that you actually want your partner to know when you’re masturbating. I certainly don’t.

“It’s not something that would turn me on – knowing that my boyfriend is jerking off,” said a Heaps Gay staff member when I mentioned the idea.

That seemed to be typical of the opinions I encountered in a very unscientific survey of whoever happened to be around while I was writing this. Spending that much money on something that helps you rub one out seems like an unwise investment.

But Lovense and a number of other companies are banking on people wanting to engage in mutual-masturbation over the internet, and they’ve invested a hell of a lot of time, money and technical expertise into making it happen – there’s even an option that allows your device to “alert” your partner when you’ve picked up ‘Max’ or ‘Nora’.

VIRTUAL REALITY caused a big kerfuffle when it was first introduced in the 1990s, but became a victim of a lack of processing power and software engineering capabilities at the time. The technology fell by the wayside – deemed to be the domain of geeks and early adopters at best.

But with advent of the Oculus Rift – a headset that has been the subject of so much hype that it’s manufacturer Oculus VR was bought by Facebook last year for a cool $2 billion – strapping a large device to your head and immersing yourself in a VR world isn’t such a ridiculous prospect anymore.

Pornographers – especially those working in Gay porn – have always been some of the keenest early-adopters of technology. Chemical photography, which was invented sometime around the early 1820s, was being widely used to depict erotic scenes almost immediately. Same thing happened with film, video and, of course, the internet.

Porn has always taken advantage of new methods of creating smut.

WHICH BRINGS US TO THE BRAVE NEW WORLD of Virtual Reality porn.

Since the Oculus Rift reintroduced VR as a viable entertainment platform, Porn manufacturers have been racing to create immersive XXX videos – something that Oculus, despite being owned by the notoriously family-friendly Facebook, is totally cool with.

“The Rift is an open platform. We don’t control what software can run on it,” said Oculus founder Palmer Lucky (what a name!) when asked yesterday about whether his company would support X-Rated content.

Companies like SugarDVD (which styles itself as a “Netflix” of porn) have been working to make fully immersive and interactive virtual reality porn.

“We have been looking into ways to turn current adult films into VR-friendly versions, but we’ve found that in order to create a more immersive experience, we need to start from the beginning of production in order to perfectly tailor adult content to the VR world,” the company stated on its blog.

“Ideally, we’d like to include interactivity as soon as possible,” a spokesperson for the company said.

VIRTUAL REALITY PORNOGRAPHERS are hoping to make fully immersive content, in which you strap on a headset and interact with the porn stars. You touch them and they respond. They give you head and you actually feel it in your junk.

And it’s coming to you soon.

The partnership between Lovense and VirtualRealPorn will involve VR videos that are coded to work in conjunction with the ‘Max’ and ‘Nora’ sex toys. Shot from a point-of-view perspective, the videos will prompt their accompanying sex toys to squeeze and shake in sync with the VR experience.

Once again, whether or not you’re keen on strapping a headset on your face and juggling a couple of bluetooth connected sex toys purely in order to jerk it is an open question.

When you’re masturbating, you always want that plausible deniability – in case someone walks in suddenly, you want to be able to quickly cover up and claim that you were just “watching reruns of Breaking Bad“.

Which would be impossible if you’re wearing an Oculus Rift and have a fleshlight sitting in your lap.

But what do I know? Because companies like Lovense, VirtualRealPorn, SugarDVD and hundreds of others are betting the bank that their devices are the future of masturbation.