Pushing the Limits of Reality in Virtual Reality Porn: Immersion – Part I

A look into what makes VR porn tick. Image credit: Special Delivery

Immersion and virtual reality go hand in hand. It’s the whole point of VR. Your brain has to be so occupied with the virtual world that it temporarily forgets about the real one.

To genuinely make virtual reality porn immersive, you have to engage the viewers’ mind for the duration of their sexual stimulation and keeping them engrossed for more. If their attention is ever detracted from the experience – say from technical issues – the immersion is shattered and has to be re-established

Most people would do anything to be a part of this! Image credit: Motherly Love

The Difference

A lot of virtual reality porn falls under the same blunders of normal 2D porn, as in: I am fucking a girl I just met, for reasons I do not know in a place I do not care about. Usually, in an upscale house with a bed or a pool, an overly slutty girl whose only goal in life is fucking me like her life depends on it and a list of sexual positions to go through before the scene is over.

A proper scenario makes the sex so much better. Image credit: Dear Diary, Jackpot!

That’s hot, right? I agree… To some extent. This works really well in normal porn because, really, you just need some naughty action to look at before you pop your load and call it a day.

But virtual reality is a medium based on immersion. How are you supposed to feel immersed when the scene rushes the development of the characters, the scenario is underdeveloped and the context is nonsensical?

Well… you just don’t. Putting too much priority on the sex takes away from the scene sometimes. Let us study some methods that have proven to amend this conundrum.

Ways to Build Up Immersion

• A Context That Makes Sense

This is not a common thing in two-dimensional porn. Ever heard of the pizza guy & the porn star cliche? The scenario is often only there to lead to the sex which results in a nonsensical context. Yet, a proper context is a very vital facet for VR porn. With a solid context, the foundation of the scene is strong. It lingers within the viewers’ mind throughout the whole scene and adds a bit of emotional attachment to the porn which is, generally, very important in sex.

This scene is an embodiment of this concept done correctly. Image credit: Fuck My Mom and Me

To make a solid context, it doesn’t really need to be realistic. I would actually say, most of the time, it’s better if it is completely unrealistic.

How? Well, this is porn. It’s fiction. People want to experience things they can never experience in real life. Therefore, directors should take liberties with pushing the boundaries of reality using realities rules. That means developing the characters, even if it means extending the teasing part of the introduction before they strip, and their purpose in the scene to resonate with what the viewer might see in real life in a completely exaggerated manner.

For example, if the viewer is fucking a teacher in the video, you know what would really sell the part? Having a student that talked to you in the beginning of the scene spy on the sex or film it on her phone. How about if the viewer is fucking a secretary? The phone rings mid-sex and the girl answers it and writes down notes while trying to hold her moans. These are all outlandish situations that can happen, even if the chances are very unlikely, and therefore, fool the brain into accepting it as a reality.

• Easy To Follow

To add to the factor of being included in a scene, the viewer should always be able to easily replicate the positions in which the sex occurs. Sitting, standing, and sleeping are the three most common positions but there are some very odd variations of these positions out there that are challenging to replicate.

I think some innovation would actually be very useful in this area. Often scenes transition from position to position using a fade or some similar visual effect. To find the position you would want, you have to scroll through the video to find it and then resume the video.

This is not an immersive way to navigate porn in virtual reality and I doubt everyone goes through twenty minutes or more of virtual reality porn every time. I think the optimal way is to implement a way to browse the positions through the video player itself. Obviously, that is a software job in the making so, for now, I think time-stamps denoting positions after the introduction scene should be more common in the studio porn scene. Maybe icons at the top right denoting the next position would be useful.

Voyeur allows you to witness all the sexual glory without the oddities of POV. Image credit: The Great Birthday Orgy

A relatively new approach in witnessing virtual reality sex has been showing potential as well. Voyeur porn videos, where you are a spectator watching porn stars have sex has been getting traction lately. I think the reason is it allows for the viewer to have freedom over how they watch the scene. By doing this, you avoid the oddities that come with a POV view, such as the POVs porn stars body not matching yours and similar problems.

It also allows the porn makers to have some degree of creativity with how to view the action. The amount of variety you can create when not limited to a POV view is quite interesting. You can now watch lesbians or gay porn stars have sex without engaging in it. This, I also think, is the easiest type of virtual reality porn to follow. It’s immersive in its own way, more as a watcher rather than a POV. It’s a lot easier to watch a whole video when you’re from a voyeur point of view rather than a POV one.I am hopeful that more studios will adopt these kinds of videos. Just because they’re easier to shoot and add a variety to the wealth of scenes available today.

• Multiple Points of Interest

This one is a bit tough in videos, but it is my personal favorite. Most porn videos are filmed in 180-degrees to ensure that the quality is at a maximum. Directors, therefore, have a limited palette to paint a lot within a relatively small area.

Example: You choose – you can either enjoy watching Jasmine Webb riding your big thick dick or Gina Gerson getting her tight pussy hungrily licked by Kiara Lord. Image credit: Your Neighbors and You

Many directors have managed to do this fairly well though. Having multiple points of interest, basically, means having more than one thing going on in the scene that requires the viewers’ attention. For example, having your dirty secretary suck your dick under the desk while your cutie girlfriend tries to seduce you by masturbating on the desk. This technique embodies everything immersion stands for. Most of the time, it requires more than one girl to be fucked in the scene.

It can work with a solo actor too though. For example, a girl giving you a handjob with her ass on the viewers face. It works so well because when the viewers’ interest in a certain aspect of the scene starts to dip, there is always something else to bring their attention back before it is too late. Keeping it varied and changing the points of interest through the scene keep the viewers attentive and engaged in the scenes. Having too many though is not a good idea as it causes the scene to be distracting. Two or three points of interest in a scene can make a huge difference to the quality of the scene. I’d personally like to see more of this technique used in virtual reality porn videos as it utilizes the hardware to its fullest potential.

The Thing Is…

Virtual reality is a medium that allows us to experience fantasies like we never could before. As is the case with most new technologies, there is still a lot to be discovered on how to fully utilize its potential. Making worlds for it is proving to be no easy task, and nor is making porn. It’s a shame that some modern scenes are still ruined due to a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of immersion. As a fan of the virtual reality porn scene, this article and the research I under went for it is the best I could do to try to amend this problem. Hopefully, it does not go un-noticed.

Let me know what you guys think. What do you guys think are the cardinal sins for breaking immersion in a scene? Leave it down below. This is the first article in a two-part series discussing immersion. Next time, we break down games and CGI and the added elements they add over 180-degrees videos.