AWE 2024: The Virtual Becomes Physical

While some critics have suggested virtual reality to be a fad, a technology with a limited lifespan, recent developments in the greater world of virtual technologies instead show VR as rapidly evolving. Now encompassing AR, MR and the latest terms of interest ‘spatial computing’ and ‘the metaverse,’ virtual entertainment shows no signs of slowing down.

Mid-June’s Augmented World Expo (or AWE) demonstrated that contrary to the opinions of many who claim AR wearables are still a long time from being market-ready, the industry is showing ample promise and may soon take hold globally, pushing virtual technologies to even more widespread adoption.

More than 6,000 attendees descended on Long Beach Convention Center in Los Angeles County, California, to wade through an exhibition floor hosting over 300 exhibitors and to attend over 500 panels, keynote addresses, and discussions. What can we in the porn world learn from AWE 2024? Well, quite a lot, it seems. 

Hands-On Porn

Weart has produced one of the most promising haptic gloves for potential porn use. Not only does it keep much of the user’s flesh uncovered, it also conveys temperature changes. [Image: Weart]

Almost nothing in the AR space makes more sense for a sexual application than haptic devices. Among the haptic products showcased at AWE ’24 were gloves, boots, and vests. While FreeAim’s haptic VR boots and the chest, arm, and hand-mounted devices of BHaptics all showed great promise for the field but it was the hand haptics of SenseGlove, HaptX, and especially WEART’s TouchDIVER Pro with its thermal cues feature that looked poised to most clearly benefit porn users. After all, who hasn’t found themselves mid-VR porn experience aching to really feel the size, weight, suppleness, and warmth of your virtual partner’s body?

As for those virtual partners themselves, the “Digital Humans” created by UneeQ as ambassadors and guides for brands as varied as Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, skincare brand Kiehl, and mental health app Groov, bring a new a level of personableness to interactions with AI. 

It’s not hard to see how such Digital Humans could propel dated adults-only chatbots into a more compelling level of effectiveness. Running parallel to virtual porn made with actual humans, purely digital personalities could soon reach a comparable level of stardom, the Hatsune Miku to porn’s Angela White or Riley Reid.

UneeQ’s “digital humans” are providing leading brands with highly personable AI-guided customer service but could they also hint at the future of porn? [Image: UneeQ]

Growth Below the Belt

With a user’s hands being at least partially covered by haptic gloves and a digital character lined up as their sex partner, there will naturally be a need for more intermediary devices to bring the physical and the virtual as close as possible. 

Although Apple was not an official participant of AWE ’24 its Vision Pro spatial computing device most certainly was. One Vision Pro feature, EyeSight, was shown to be a viable way to bring the face of a virtual character more or less onto a physical head; albeit a mannequin’s head. Integrate something like EyeSight into a high-end sex doll, and suddenly, we’re looking at the physical manifestation of a virtual partner in a way VR and AR porn fans currently only dream about. 

Just got a glimpse of what EyeSight could become. The future looks wild! ?#AWE2024 @ARealityEvent pic.twitter.com/rjQuwRYO2d

— Cas and Chary XR (@CasandChary) June 20, 2024