Haptic ‘Skin’ Brings Human Touch to VR, AR Porn

Image: I Want You! (SexBabesVR)

Porn is About Connection

Whether it’s watching two performers share a genuine desire for each other or living out to your own deepest desires with a live-streaming goddess, all porn relies heavily on human connections. The biggest obstacle to overcome on the journey to a perfect porn-fed sex life has always been touch. How to bring the tactile sensations of real-life sexual intimacy into VR and AR Porn without large, awkward devices has long been a difficult problem to overcome. There are many haptic additions a user can make to their VR or AR gear arsenal. However, few come remotely close to the feeling of skin-to-skin contact.

A Skin to Skin Promise

A concept developed by biomedical researchers at City University of Hong Kong and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, details a wireless haptic feedback system that they claim can accurately mimic, among other sensations, human touch. Utilizing a soft membrane containing an array of actuators, the thin bandage-like device adheres to a user’s skin. It wirelessly receives input signals that control the actuators’ movement, pressure, and temperature to mimic a range of physical sensations.

The development team hopes to turn its concept into a commercial product, believing it can radically advance how VR and AR is used in communications, medical procedures and research, and, naturally, gaming and entertainment.

Image: Skin-integrated wireless haptic interfaces for virtual and augmented reality. (Yu et al.)

A Brand New Porn Sensation

Image: My Virtual Girlfriend AR / WET Productions Inc.

Avid porn fans are no doubt hoping that, like many tech breakthroughs, this haptic “skin” makes its way to VR porn before it hits the mainstream. Perhaps even more exciting are the possibilities for AR porn. Virtual girlfriend apps provide a certain degree of intimacy, but walking down the street hand-in-hand just isn’t the same if you can’t actually feel her fingers mix with yours. AR porn is developing rapidly, but a breakthrough as huge as haptic “skin” systems brings a whole new potential into view. Just imagine: one day, not too long from now, the feeling of a virtual lover rocking against your body will feel just as real as your own bed against your back.

It’s a short leap from this haptic “skin” concept to one designed especially for sexual interactions. In the hands of the right developers and content producers, such a membrane could soon be adhering to your own skin as you enable AR and welcome your favorite virtual porn star into your home.

In this near future, you’ll not only be hearing and seeing a perfect virtual human. Her movement, the pressure of her body against yours, her tightening as she climaxes will all be vividly rendered how they should be, by our most powerful tool of communication and connection: touch.