The Future of Adult VR with Palmer Luckey

The amusement VR summit, where a large number of adult VR and virtual reality games are exhibited, recently hosted none-other than Oculus founder Palmer Luckey.

The discussion begins with questions regarding the current state of virtual reality as a whole, adult VR, and the Japanese VR market.

Palmer responds with the good and bad current global status of virtual reality.  The bad news, he says, is that VR is not taking off as fast as some people would have thought, an opinion felt by the media and financial analysts especially.

With that said, he says that in reality, the progress of VR is moving incredibly quickly. As an example, if you look at the virtual reality industry and count the number of headsets sold since the start of consumer VR just a couple of years ago, it is doing better than the iPod did in the same point of its lifespan.

He continues with some solid figures regarding the Gear VR, which sold 6 million units and will continue to sell millions more in 2017, PSVR (PlayStation VR) has already sold 1 million units.

These figures don’t even take into account the HTC Vive or “the headset from the other company” which has also sold in enormous quantities, for those not up to speed, the company Palmer is referring to is Oculus VR.  There are also millions of Google Cardboards out in the wild, but Palmer excluded these as “they don’t count.”

“Content Sales Failing VR”

Palmer states that lack of compelling content is hurting software sales and in turn virtual reality as a whole. It is up to the content creators to make those killer applications that make people want to use the VR headsets.

Shouting about how awesome VR porn is, is not socially acceptable.  So, in contrast, Palmer mimes to the person next to him in a whispering pose, “hey buddy, I’ve got some adult VR, you should get some.”

Palmer states that this is the current state of virtual reality.  There are some things that can be done by the hardware manufacturers, with better headsets, lower prices, or stand-alone devices that don’t even need a computer, but there is still a lot that needs to be done with the state of the current sales and content marketing.

Does VR Porn Even Exist?

Palmer passes the same question to the hosts to find out where they think the current state of virtual reality is. The first interviewer suggests that it’s all about the money. Palmer somewhat agrees but says the fact is that developers need to pay their bills that allow them to focus on VR development.

Palmer says all (then retracts to say some, maybe one) of the big companies give tons of their money to software developers, but not adult VR developers.

He says that, as an example, if you are in your office and you mention to a workmate about VR porn, then they will probably say how awesome it is.

On the other hand, let’s say you were speaking to a public panel and someone in the audience asks the same question, your response would likely be completely different, as in even denying that VR porn even exists.

He goes on to say that if he were still at a major VR company, he might secretly invest in virtual reality pornography, due to the fact that porn has pushed pretty much all other types of media.

The next question asked to Palmer is what changes he would like to see that would help the VR porn industry.  His response is that he would like to see a lot of things change but in the real world it comes down to what can realistically change, for example, he would like to see major companies investing in VR porn but that’s not going to happen overnight. He continues to say that there is a lot of adult VR content out there but a lot of people don’t even know about it, all of the marketing for VR is going to social applications, video games, business, but very little of adult virtual reality pornography.

One of the biggest problems facing adult VR is getting people to know about it. In the West, PornHub, that has many millions of users for normal non-virtual reality porn launched a dedicated VR section, and in turn made millions of new people aware of virtual reality, and this isn’t because the content is better but just because they’re great at getting people to know about it, Palmer says.

Seeking the traditional games market as a place to find inspiration for promoting virtual reality porn videos, Palmer suggests that YouTubers or steamers could be sent keys or videos to allow them to promote the adult content (albeit with obvious restrictions). He follows up with an offer, exclaiming that if anyone wants to be connected with famous US streamers, they can contact him with the aim of helping adult VR content get more in the public eye.

Palmer then asks the interviewers what they would like to see in the VR industry, “somewhere to advertise” is the response, and he also suggests an adult VR mascot to use as a promotion tool.  Similar to unity-chan that was used as the mascot for Unity, Palmer replies.

They continue to talk about the fact that there is a lot of money in the adult industry as a whole but not enough is going into the virtual reality side of it.

Palmer continues with a story about when he started the Oculus Kickstarter campaign and selling VR headsets for $300 but there was a reward if you paid the $10,000 tier and you would actually get to visit their offices. Most of the people that backed it are rich game developers, bar one person who owned many adult video sites. Palmer questioned the backer as to why he would back the campaign for so much money, the backer replied saying he had so much money and just thought the project was interesting. He continues to suggest more people in the VR industry with that amount of money should do the same and put it into the virtual reality industry – “be that guy.”

The discussion continues with how VR porn studios are approaching different video production methods, suggesting that most are creating their own video applications based on their peripheral technology, and not creating standards like having one device that will work with many applications or vice-versa.  Continuing, Luckey says it is probably too much to ask right now of the adult VR industry to create standards but at some point, it will have to happen.

Mad Scientist or Adult VR Futurist?

One thing Palmer would like to see (and he says he’s thinking about helping this happen), is to push the hardware to its absolute limits for haptic feedback technology, stating that it is incredibly difficult for VR developers to make hardware that works really well.  Buying a very expensive industrial robotic arm, like the types used to build cars, and then using that to make VR sex games could go towards creating the next generation sex technology.

The next question from someone in the audience was about how the limitations of VR make it difficult to tell stories because the video is usually shot from one or two perspectives compared to traditional adult videos with many camera angles used. Palmer somewhat agrees but says the limitations are new and different and need to be explored more.

Another question from the audience which leads to quite a bit of laughter is “why is Palmer currently supporting the HTC Vive?” Palmer’s reply is that he supports all VR hardware, even when he was supporting “the other company’s virtual reality hardware” but HTC, he says, is releasing more interesting things into the market. “I support everyone, not equally but… at least a little bit.”

His final comment on this was that he’ll answer the real question being asked: “no, I won’t be buying HTC it looks like.”

It Gets Real

An audience question again, they ask about the ability to connect VR straight into the brain. The discussion now goes into WTF mode.

Palmer gives praise to Reki Kawahara, the creator of sword art online, and his futuristic vision of augmented reality and virtual reality. But believes the best way to create his vision is not to go directly into the brain.

There is research being done that will be capable of reading what people are thinking. But inputting data back into the brain is incredibly difficult even if we threw regulations out of the window and had perfect surgery.

Because of these complications, Palmer believes the best option for the ability to move around and interact in virtual reality while you’re just actually sitting in your chair without moving, is not to go into the brain but directly into the spinal cord, the external peripheral nervous system.

He continues to say that this is something he’s actually experimenting with. He doesn’t actually say going into the spinal cord but he is looking into providing stimulation via the nervous system to provide a feeling of touch and the ability to move around in VR without actually physically moving. Interestingly though, he says that VR headsets will still be required as the optic nerve (the link from the eye to the brain) has way too much information to process so vastly improved HMD’s will still be the way to go forward if we want things like augma or nervegear in the future.

The final words of wisdom Palmer leave the audience with is stating that he’s been dating his girlfriend Nicole for 8 years and she knew him before he got rich.

Summary: We have needed, and still need people just like Palmer in VR.

Thanks, Palmer!