The adult industry has always been considered at the forefront of new technology. They were the first to jump on webcams and streaming video, as well as VHS cassette tapes (which many say played a crucial role in determining the outcome of the VHS/Betamax wars). Now, adult-streaming service SugarDVD is jumping on the VR bandwagon, with the announcement that they’re developing interactive porn for the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift, so you can see every surgically altered labia or Caesarean scar in crystal-clear detail.
For the past few months, the company says it has been developing a demo for its Oculus Rift porn, which it hopes to premiere at the Electronic Entertainment Expo next month. They’ve teamed up with mainstream motion-capture studios in Los Angeles to shoot interactive content for the Oculus Rift, which involves placing sensors on performers’ faces and bodies to track their movements.
The result, says SugarDVD spokesperson Rebecca Bolen, is an interactive experience where users can control everything from the positions to the girls they see on the headset. “The average adult consumer generally wants a more interactive, immersive experience, which is lacking from some aspects of porn nowadays,” she tells the Daily Dot. “We figured with Oculus Rift, we could give the consumer a really interactive, customizable experience.”
Much like Netflix or Hulu, SugarDVD charges $6.99 per month for unlimited access to their streaming content. The same goes for subscribers to the upcoming Oculus Rift app, who will be invited to take part in the beta testing pool after the demo launches.
Although Oculus Rift, which was recently bought by Facebook for nearly $2 billion, is primarily known as a gaming platform, Bolen is careful to note that SugarDVD’s demo is “less of a game, more of an app.” The demo will largely consist of casting-couch, straightforward porn scenes, rather than elaborate, fantasy-driven narrative content, nor will it be gamified in the least. As Bolen puts it, “You can beat a game, whereas you beat something else with our app.”
This is not the first time an adult production company has developed VR content . Much like 3D porn, which has for years been heralded as the next wave of adult content, adult studios have tried to capitalize on the novelty of virtual reality with varying degrees of success, mostly due to the limitations of past VR technology. Simply put, a lot of it looks really, really creepy. It’s worth noting that this is also not the first time adult studios have developed demos for Oculus Rift. Adult VR startup Veiveiv released a “Lucid Dreams” demo on Vimeo a few months ago (NSFW), as did the studio Wicked Paradise, with their demo for a VR “erotic adventure.”
Given how resistant developers are to hosting porn on their platforms—Google, for instance, has been notoriously rigid in restricting adult-themed apps on Google Glass—it’s unclear how receptive Oculus Rift and, by extension, Facebook will be to the inevitable onslaught of VR porn. But Bolen doesn’t foresee that being an issue, saying Facebook does not regulate the content on the headset. “We’re on XBox, Playstation, and Nintendo. All of those companies say they don’t want hardcore porn, but obviously we’re still on there,” she says. “They don’t want porn associated with their public brand, but they’re more than happy to take money from us.”
Over the years, the porn industry has been lagging behind in the tech world, with some arguing that gaming has supplanted it as one of the leading adopters of new tech. Yet despite the industry’s lagging revenue and struggles with porn piracy, Bolen says mainstream companies haven’t forgotten its past reputation as a digital innovator.
“Technology has proven that if you don’t host porn on it, no one’s gonna want it,” she says. “A lot of modern technology is propelled by the fact that it could play porn, and the ones that didn’t you don’t see around anymore. So any company would be shooting itself in the foot if it actively fought against it.”
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