It’s been noted here already how popular, if still niche, passthrough porn viewing in VR is becoming. Over the last month or so, several more studios at SexLikeReal have begun filming and releasing VR porn videos in front of a green screen to optimize viewing in passthrough/mixed reality. Most notably, for the first time one of the top VR porn studios – RealityLovers – has released passthrough VR movies. Judging from the number of upvotes these videos attract, as well as positive comments, both at SLR and on Reddit, then it does appear that passthrough is an exploding niche within the (still) niche itself of VR porn. Could it even become the standard way that VR porn videos are filmed and released?
Most of the people viewing these passthrough videos in mixed reality will be owners of the popular Quest 2 headset, which has only low resolution black and white passthrough. The Meta Quest Pro is a big leap up, with higher resolution and color passthrough. It also has a much higher price of course, and it’s likely that only a few tens of thousand of the headsets have been sold thus far at most, even with a recent price drop, compared to the 15 million or more Quest 2s that are widely believed to have been shipped over the last 2 1/2 years. And although a big improvement on the Quest 2, the passthrough quality of even the Quest Pro has come in for some criticism. Despite this, passthrough VR porn (or passthrough AR porn if you prefer) is growing in popularity, to the extent that even established VR porn studios are filming in it. Later this year, the Meta Quest 3 will finally be released. Recently, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that it will have the same color passthrough technology as the Quest Pro. There is every reason to believe that the Quest 3 will be at least as popular as its predecessor. Consider how much of a growing segment of the VR porn market passthrough already is, with only a likely audience able to appreciate it in color in the tens of thousands at best. This time next year, that could have changed to over 10 million or more.
Why Is Passthrough Porn Proving So Popular Already?
A common sentiment among those praising their experiences of passthrough VR porn is that it feels more ‘immersive’ than standard VR porn, which of course is supposed to be fully ‘immersive’. However, I would speculate that for the majority of people, having a virtual object appear in your real environment, is more convincing to the brain (and dick) than being suddenly immersed in a fully virtual world. This appears to be true even with the crude black & white passthrough of the Quest 2, so the effect will be even great in color and better resolution mixed reality. Fucking a girl on your own bed, not only feels crazy, but feels more convicing. Not just visually, but the reassurance of the familiar way the matress sinks as you lie on it and such. Your real environment can be meshed into the passthrough VR/AR experience in other ways too. For example, the studio AmoreVR has already released a passthrough video for viewing in your own shower!
As to the liklihood of passthrough porn becoming the new normal, as well as potentially being more popular than full VR porn, it would in most cases be easier and cheaper to film. Naturally there will always be a place for the full escapism of regular VR porn, and it’s likely we will see the two co-exist as alternative categories. There is also the possibility that tech will advance soon so that filming in front of a green screen is not necessary, and the screen can be added in postproduction for two seperate versions of the video – passthrough and full VR. One thing for sure is that we can expect to see a lot more passthrough porn over the coming 12 months!
