Five Things I Hate About VR Porn

Sia Siberia eye rolling in VR porn

1 # Eye Rolling And Poor Acting

Far more important than in regular 2D porn is the standard of acting in virtual reality. That’s because we’re not just getting stimulated by watching two bodies fucking, we’re experiencing the action in 3D POV, and the point is to believe you are actually in the scene having sex with the female pornstar. And when she overdoes a fake orgasm, rolls her eyes in a ridiculous fashion, or does anything to demonstrate she is acting rather than genuinely feeling it, it’s a real immersion killer. VR porn studios are paying through the roof to upgrade to 7 or 8K resolution cameras in order to be more immersive and real than their rivals, but asking the female actress not to overdo the acting seems beyond them. And it’s not just me who feels that eye rolling and the rest is a massive stage door effect as much as pixels or the sight of a microphone in the shot. A recent poll on the Oculus NSFW reddit found that 50% of viewers who answered said that eye-rolling in VR porn was ‘ridiculous and immersion breaking’.

Now think about this VR porn studios. Don’t interpret this as – ‘well, 50% don’t mind or even like eye rolling, so what’s the problem?’. The correct take home message is that you are actively turning off 50% of your market and ruining their experience of your product.

Sia Siberia eye rolling during sex

Sia Siberia eye-rolling during sex for Virtual Taboo. Image used for illustrative purposes only – Virtual Taboo aren’t any worse than other studios, and when it’s a girl like Sia dressed up in a cute anime style outfit, it almost works.

2 # Poor Quality VR GFE’s

Given the frequent poor standard of acting in VR porn, especially when it comes to the actual sex, it’s no surprise that GFE’s (‘girlfriend experiences’) are often not as good as they should be. But it’s not just the fakeness of eye-rolling and hysteric orgasms that kill the fantasy of real intimacy, it’s the lack of foreplay, cuddling, and build up to the action. This is not true of Japanese VR porn, not at all. Most JAV VR GFE movies feature real intimacy, that are usually well acted and tender. Not only do they feature LOTS of cuddles and kisses before the main dish, they often spend the first minutes of the movie with the actress and yourself fully clothed, chatting, eating, or playing games together. Sometimes, they show you on a date with your ‘girlfriend’, such as the following super movie featuring JAV actress Hikari Sakuraba. Although not strictly a GFE movie, as you actually ‘seduce’ the girl on the street, you do take her to a restaurant and build the intimacy.

Watch the Full Movie at R18

3 # Lack Of Compilation Videos

One thing about masturbating with a VR headset on, is it can be pretty tricky to move about and change position when the sex position changes in the scene – doubly so if you are using a sex toy as well. Many VR porn fans are happy just to enjoy the complete experience sitting or lying down, but for total immersion, some like to match their physical position with that in the scene. It can be a bit of a stage door effect for some to be sitting masturbating while the girl sucks you, or rides you cowgirl style, and then bends over to be fucked doggystyle – while in real life you remain seated.

While an entire video of one girl being fucked in the same position might be a little boring, an easy solution to this would be more compilation videos of different scenes and girls experienced in one position, for example cowgirl, missionary, or doggy style. Surprisingly, there doesn’t seem to be many compilation videos of this nature out there.

And an unchanging POV position doesn’t have to be boring either. I reviewed SwallowBay here a few days ago – a new VR porn site in which the male actor’s POV does not change throughout the scene, as he receives a blowjob (an sometimes a titty fuck) in each video. found the unchanging POV position to work really well, and can’t wait until there are scripts available to use the Handy with while watching the scenes. It would be welcome if other top sites at least experimented with the occasional video devoted to a single position.

4 # Lack of Creativity Compared To Japanese Studios

Well if you’ve read up to here, you’ll know that I’m a fan of Japanese VR porn, and I do feel it is superior in many ways to the VR content currently produced by Western studios. In particular, the creativity is on another level in Japan. There is something for every possible taste, niche, and fetish in JAV VR content. The settings are also more varied and imaginative, the story lines and the action equally so. This may be partly due to the fact that Japanese men tend to be so notoriously kinky, and it might be due to the fact that virtual reality porn seems to be more popular in Japan, and has been for a longer time than in the West where it has struggled somewhat to take off.

Recently I took a look at the newest JAV VR releases, and in the space of 2 or 3 days, there was a video devoted to sexy women (including women in office clothes etc.) running on a treadmill. There was a video consisting entirely of girls licking your face and body. Another video of girls stripping and masturbating filmed from the ceiling, a video filmed on an aeroplane, and another filmed on a bus.

If there is one piece of advice I could give a VR porn producer, it would be to watch more Japanese VR porn.

5 # The Unhappy Valley

But perhaps the thing I dislike the most about virtual reality porn, is that it’s so close to the real thing, and yet… not quite. There is a well known concept called ‘the uncanny valley‘ which is used to refer to the sense of weirdness or even disgust one feels looking at a sex doll, or a sex robot, on account of it being so close to appearing to be a lifelike human, and yet recognizably not (quite) so.

Well I think we need a similar but new concept, particularly for virtual reality porn. A term that captures the sense of immersion and sexual realness of the experience, that is so close to the real thing, and yet sad realization that it is not quite satisfyingly so. I term it ‘the unhappy valley‘. It’s not a sense of disgust or eeriness, but rather a sense of sadness or regret. I compare it to the feeling of waking up from a highly emotional and sexual dream, in which you have experienced physical or emotional contact with a desirable partner, and suddenly for a few seconds or more, you feel wistful regret at the realization it was simply a dream. The girl you bonded with did not exist.

As anyone who has experienced VR porn will know, it’s more than just masturbation. It’s an experience that is very close to real sex, and even more so if enjoyed with a haptic sex toy such as the Handy. And yet it’s not quite there. It’s real enough at the time, especially as you approach climax, for your brain to be tricked briefly perhaps to thinking it’s real. But then, you realize that it was scarcely more real than a dream. Even live virtual sex with a remote partner or webcam performer, still carries this sense of the unhappy valley, until such time as full body tactile sense is incorporated into the experience, including warmth and other sensory cues such as smell.

About xhumanist

Xhumanist has been writing on porn/sex tech for nearly two decades, and has been predicting the rise of VR and AR porn, as well as AI porn, and their coming together to produce fully 'immersive porn', which would be indistinguishable from the real thing, and create a society of 'sexual abundance'. He identifies as a digisexual, and has been quoted in Wired Magazine.

View all posts by xhumanist →

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *