The Meta Quest Pro was finally revealed last week, and in just another seven days it will be available for purchase. Will VR porn be one of the first things that new owners will want to try out on it? And what will the Meta Quest Pro do, if anything, for both virtual reality and augmented reality porn? It’s important to understand that the Quest Pro, priced at $1,500, is not expected to sell in anything like the numbers of the hugely popular Quest 2, which has shipped somewhere in the region of 15 million units since its release almost exactly two years ago. This new Meta headset is aimed squarely at business users, although it’s possible that it will attract a significant number of consumer ‘early adopters’, keen to try out the advanced mixed reality and face tracking features of the headset.
However, even though the Quest Pro will likely sell only at a fraction rate of the Quest 2, one shouldn’t write off its potential impact upon the VR porn market. Unlike with the Quest 2, which was bought by the bucketload last Christmas as a gift for kids, this high-end device will be owned and used almost entirely by adults. Secondly, those who can afford to buy a $1,500 VR headset can afford a subscription to a VR porn site. So there is a good chance that the Meta Quest Pro may increase the size of the market for VR porn, more than you might think from headset sales alone.
Image above taken from ‘Study Time Episode 4 : Group Lesson’ at Virtual Taboo.
The adult orientated nature of the headset, together with the face and eye tracking features, may start to create an adult metaverse that is more than just recorded VR porn videos. Social VR today is dominated by kids, even to some extent ‘Horizon Worlds’, which Zuckerberg hopes to be the seed that grows into his vision of a trillion dollar metaverse. Only several months ago, Meta added a feature whereby creators could label their worlds in the metaverse 18+. This was likely done with the release of the Quest Pro in mind. Although porn is still not allowed in Horizon Worlds, with the adoption of the Quest Pro, we will likely see the first real adult dating taking place there, and some of it might even get a little bit kinky!
And then of course, there is the mixed reality feature, and the vast potential of AR Porn. We have already seen the niche popularity of ‘passthrough porn’ on the Quest 2, despite it really being an awkward hack of regular VR porn that has to deal with the low resolution B&W passthrough on that headset. The passthrough mode on the Quest Pro is a central feature of the headset, and is in high-resolution color. No doubt there will be VR porn sites filming scenes specifically to be enjoyed in Quest Pro passthrough, and there have already been AR porn games demoed on the headset.
The ‘spotlight’ style videos of DarkRoomVR work well experienced in passthrough mode on the Meta Quest Pro as mixed reality porn.
*Update November 2022 – The 3D Volumetric strippers of Naughty America’s RealGirlsNow are now available to be experienced in mixed reality on the Quest Pro. No need to install any app either – just visit their site and the girls will be viewable in AR.
Another advantage of the Quest Pro over its cheaper and older sibling, is that it is quite a bit more comfortable to wear, at least while sitting or standing, as the battery at the back means that the weight of it is more evenly distributed. However, as a lot of people like to watch their VR porn lying on their back, there is a concern that the battery at the back will make that actually less comfortable.
So although the Meta Quest Pro has almost been written off by the media already as a popular consumer device, I have strong expectations that it will play a part in the growth of both VR and AR porn in the months ahead, as well as helping to kickstart the real adult metaverse.