From their very conception, video games are a leisure product designed to create an immersive experience. That is, getting the player “into” the story, in a way almost literal sometimes. Good games are those that make us abstract from the outside world, because they require all of our concentration. Either because of its difficulty, as can happen with some of the original ones like Pacman and Tetris, or because of its absorbing story and created world, as with Zelda or Elder RingHigh quality monitors and headphones with surround sound have precisely helped make this experience much more realistic. We get into the world of the game and before we realize it we have spent hours playing, without anything from the outside requiring us. The next step in this search for total immersion are virtual reality glasses, a gadget that has given a lot of talk in recent years, but that has not yet reached its maximum development point.
After almost a decade of launches of different devices, the moment we are in 2023 is very similar to where we started. These glasses are now somewhat cheaper, but their technological capacity is still not enough to move large games. In fact, any computer already needs a very powerful card to be able to offer a good experience in the most modern games. VR glasses like Galaxy Gear, Occulus or Vibe have been another step in technological immersion, but not the definitive step. In fact, the world of video games has not benefited as much from this advancement as the porn industry. And virtual reality glasses have indeed served to take the experience of POV videos to a new level within adult cinema. Porn, which has always been a sector open to technological advances, has found in virtual reality a new universe in which to expand. With its pros and cons, like any other preview, but very interesting in the sense of offering an experience much closer to the real thing for viewers.
A sector in constant revolution
Reviled by many, marginalized for decades, what no one can deny is that the pornography sector has been and is one of the most important in entertainment. The data speaks for itself. Porn moves tens of billions of dollars a year, and its growth is exponential, especially in the last couple of decades. While the music industry languishes and almost no one buys records anymore, while conventional cinema must survive as best it can by selling to streaming, porn has been able to recycle and evolve. In fact, as soon as it understood the capacity for expansion that the Internet had, porn opted one hundred percent for this new technology, almost three decades ago. Videos began to be digitized, and the target audience grew dramatically.
It is no coincidence, in fact, because at the end of the day porn has always known how to adapt to each new revolution. It already did so when the format changed in the 80s, when video took over the market, obtaining new income through rentals. DVD was the next step, almost at the same time as the Internet. Porn has reached social networks, it has become one of the pillars of the cybernetic revolution and it has also been very attentive to the advances of virtual reality. Because if there is an experience that we want to be immersive, it is the one that has to do with sex. Hence, for some time now, porn has been playing with this type of gadget, having done so in the 80s with those original 3D glasses. Always up to date in terms of technological advances, porn even works as a guide to where things are going to go in the coming years, in any other business.
More immersive scenes
What can this new virtual reality technology offer to porn? Of course, a much more immersive experience, which takes the viewer to be “inside” the scene. For several decades, videos known as POV have been a very important part of the porn industry. These are scenes recorded from the point of view (Point of View) of one of the participants, usually the boy. This effect is achieved thanks to the light cameras that today can be placed right on the actor’s head, giving a real vision of how he is experiencing the scene from the inside. POV has been used in cinema for a long time and serves precisely to place the viewer inside the scene, as if he were the one starring in it. It is also a common resource in video games known as First Person.
By being “inside” the scene with our virtual reality glasses we have a much more realistic feeling of what is happening. Obviously, we know that the girl is not in front of us, but when we receive the visual stimulus from the glasses, the optical illusion that is created manages to trick our brain. POV videos already existed before the creation of these technological gadgets, but it is now that they have begun to emerge. Although virtual reality is not yet so established in the pornography sector, it seems that the first steps are firm. In fact, we can already find a large number of videos of this type on any erotic platform, even for free. We are not claiming that there are many men who buy these glasses just to watch porn, but of course, the trajectory of virtual reality in erotic content is increasingly important.
The future of pornography
Changes are necessary in any sector, even in those that seem absolutely established. The world does not remain undisturbed, especially in this era in which the Internet and technology are changing everything. Understanding that you have to adapt to all these advances is what allows an industry to go far or stagnate. And in porn they have always been very visionary in this sense, letting themselves be carried away by everything that appeared and daring to try new things. Technology has brought a brutal change in model for the sector, but it has been a change for the better. Because today more porn is created and consumed than ever, which has made the industry also democratize.
What is the future of porn? Technology will play a huge role in the industry’s next steps, of course. Virtual reality, the exploration of new forms of pornography through new devices, will be predominant in the coming years. The connection with sex toys and robots could also mark a before and after in porn, taking it to a new threshold. All this without overlooking the revolution that platforms like Onlyfans are bringing about, which have completely subverted the porn business model that has been taking place until now. Girls who want to make a living from erotic content no longer have to be subject to production company contracts. They can offer their content how and when they want, which means that there are more and more models and actresses interested in this new porn