The Evolution of Lifelike AR

Many tech leaders held back on getting behind VR technology, not because it wasn’t impressive but because they knew the truly world-changing tech was just around the corner. Apple is perhaps the perfect example. While Meta was pushing VR with its Quest headsets, Apple was toiling away at devices that could work more seamlessly with the existing world in what it calls Mixed Reality. Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality (MR) should be familiar concepts to most readers. Simply put, it integrates virtual elements into the perceived real world of the user.

From speedometers overlaid onto windshields to virtual maps for wandering tourists, from a video game set in your own house to filling your bedroom with all kinds of sexy characters, AR offers users a uniquely compelling opportunity to change their perception of the world around them. While some naysayers will argue that detachment from the real-world environment keeps the user in a fantasy land, it’s clearly a fantasyland humankind wants to make real. Humans have long tried to create alternate views of the world. What else could you consider a movie or a photograph but different interpretations and presentations of reality?

AR Erupts Online

Tech savvy users of X (formerly known as Twitter) and TikTok have been serving up tantalizing uses of AR in recent months. Many AR creations have been genuinely astonishing, earning ample retweets and even swaying some of the aforementioned naysayers to Team AR. Let’s take a look at some of the marvels being created for AR.

The AR Fashion of Piper Zy

Ring design of the day✨⚙️⚜️ #artist #piperzy #futurism #metaverse #augmentedreality #augmentedrealityart pic.twitter.com/LHjEPZT6Wh

— piperzy (@piperzy222) July 17, 2022

Waiting in a Car with Meta Quest 3

Waiting in car in mixed reality is crazy ?#MetaQuest3 #MetaQuest #Quest3 #MixedReality #MR #AR #VR pic.twitter.com/ySRUmLUHLC

— Ben Geskin (@BenGeskin) October 29, 2023

AR Human Replicas

Using AI to create a digital twin of myself and then bringing it into an interactive augmented reality experience

⁃LumaAI (NeRF)
⁃Blender (Editing)
⁃8th Wall (WebAR)

Here’s how I turned myself into an AR game character.
1/6 pic.twitter.com/YqrcKLo4Ar

— I▲N CURTIS (@XRarchitect) November 15, 2022

Real Objects or Virtual Objects?

Which ones are real? ? #MR #AR pic.twitter.com/sGBb86fIKV

— Aldin (@AldinDynamics) October 30, 2023

Becoming Human

Meta deserves plenty of credit for pushing AR into the mainstream, and Mark Zuckerberg’s recent conversation with podcaster Lex Fridman demonstrated a key component to that success. The podcast was conducted remotely using advanced VR renderings of both Zuckerberg and Fridman, thanks to Meta’s photorealistic codec avatars, and showed just how far tech has come in recent years.

Epic Games released the Machine Learning Deformer Sample for Unreal Engine 5.2 in May ’23, showcasing a truly astonishing degree of character movement based on musculature, flesh, and cloth simulation.

A jaw-dropping example of next-gen 3D modeling, such a feature of the Unreal Engine, could potentially be used to bring adult gamers an incredibly lifelike experience of another character. When it comes to VR and AR porn games, character deformations – in other words, the effect of stimuli on a physical body; the indent created by a finger pressing a cheek; the flushed, quivering vulva of a woman orgasming – will be integral to creating the greatest possible immersion and the highest degree of lifelike interactions.

VRPorn.com already hosts AR/MR porn that utilizes the passthrough feature of certain headsets to place a virtual sex partner right there in the room with you. Most often, these partners are real pornstars captured in 3D, but they are also, on occasion original CGI creations. As AR becomes more fluid and convincing to the human eye and sense of reality, and with Unreal Engine-inspired graphical improvements to virtual characters, we could soon be seeing porn that would be revolutionary not just for the adult industry but for sex itself.