350+ free-roam venues with happy operators!
350+ free-roam venues with happy operators!
It’s well established that porn has driven the adoption of many technologies, from VHS tapes to pay-per-view to broadband internet. Throughout history, adult content has played a significant role in developing and popularizing various media formats and technologies, often acting as a proving ground for innovations that eventually become mainstream.
I’ve been asked many times why VR porn hasn’t taken off. First, I am not sure this is an accurate assessment. It’s not like porn companies regularly report their financials to the media. Recent surveys show 15% of men have tried VR porn. As of 2021, the market was estimated to be only $700 million but expected to grow to $20 billion by 2026, representing 20% of the total adult industry revenue. I wouldn’t bet on the accuracy of that forecast, as most analysts have sucked at predicting the VR market.
There are signs it might be growing. Teens are among the fastest-growing users of virtual reality. And while it’s supposed to be “adults only,” as a father of two young men who were once teenagers, I know what’s up. I personally never looked at porn when I was a teen. [Click this link to buy some crypto shares in this bridge I am selling]
I’m getting there.
I was recently in Barcelona. Its progressive reputation is evident in its vibrant LGBTQ+ community, diverse kink culture, and pioneering initiatives in the adult entertainment industry. The city hosts one of Europe’s most prominent Pride celebrations, attracting over 250,000 participants annually, highlighting its commitment to diversity and inclusion. Additionally, Barcelona is home to the Gaixample district, a central hub for LGBTQ+ culture, featuring numerous bars, clubs, and shops that cater to the community.
Barcelona also boasts a vibrant and diverse kink community, reflecting a progressive and open-minded ethos. The town hosts the Barcelona Fetish Weekend, attracting enthusiasts worldwide and offering workshops, performances, and social gatherings that foster community and acceptance. Numerous clubs and venues cater to the BDSM and fetish scenes, providing safe spaces for exploration and connection through themed nights, educational sessions, and social events—all emphasizing consent, safety, and mutual respect.
In adult entertainment, Barcelona has been at the forefront of ethical and innovative approaches. So it should have been no surprise that Erika Lust, whose work in feminist pornography has been featured everywhere, from a hit TED Talk to features in The Independent and Wired Magazine, opened what I believe to be the first location-based VR porn experience there in October.
The experience opened my eyes to what’s possible using VR for location-based entertainment experiences that go beyond video games for kids and families. Sometimes, it helps to have the doors blown off your limited perspective, and that’s what this experience did for me. I’ve searched for innovation in the LBVR space for a few years. It’s been slow to come. No pun intended.
The House of Erika Lust (Warning: Some Images NSFW) only operates for 3 hours each night, four nights a week. It runs in the same location as another location-based VR installation. They shut that one down, changed out some props in the lobby, and switched a button. It’s an example of the power of virtual reality as an LBE technology. Push a button and transform your business from one market to an entirely different one for different dayparts. It’s the downloadable theme park concept I have been ranting about for the last 6 months, which we will explore in depth at the VR Arcade and Attractions Summit in March.
The ticket cost under 30 euros. And the experience lasted 10 minutes. Kind of like a truck stop handjob. They told me it would last longer, but you know…
I put on the HTC Focus 3 headset and was transported into a hallway where I was offered two versions of the experience: explicit and erotic. I chose explicit, as I wanted to understand how they were pushing the edges in location-based adult entertainment.
The experience was built for promoter Layers of Reality by Univrse. Its innovative free-roam platform allows up to 30 people to explore a space of about 1000 square feet. In this case, only a few people were in the space with me. There are no controllers, just hand tracking.
Below is a fair bit of detail about the experience. I thought it was important for two reasons. First, it’s unlikely you’ll every experience this yourself. If you’re in Barcelona, by all means, check it out. Second, I wanted to highlight the variety of interactions in the experience. So many VR experiences come across as one-dimensional and get boring after a short while. This one nails the element of what makes something fun: discovery and surprise.
The first thing I noticed was the environment. I was in a very upscale house with soft lighting and warm materials (all virtual, of course.) The graphic quality was high for a standalone VR experience. There are two basic VR systems, standalone and PCVR. The latter is where you get the best graphic quality. High-end PC graphics cards can render billions of polygons. You get realistic lighting, shading, and textures. I’ve done some PCVR experiences where the graphics seem almost real. Standalone VR renders all the content on a mobile chipset in the headset. There’s no computer; everything is contained in the headset. This was the first time I experienced a standalone VR experience where I questioned if it was PCVR. Univrse is optimizing the Qualcomm XR2 chipset to get the most out of it. It certainly was “good enough,” a term I used to loathe but have come to accept as a practical reality.
I walked around the corner and was invited to open a door. The interactions were simple; there was no need to figure out how to do things. You touch the doorknob, and the door opens. I was in a bathroom with a fogged-up mirror. I was prompted to wipe the mirror, and the first sex scene appeared through the fog.
I left the bathroom and entered the kitchen. There was a modern fridge with a built-in display with pictures you could scroll through of naked people doing sexy things with each other. But these weren’t your typical porn actors. These looked like normal people. Erika is a staunch proponent of representation in her work. Every size, shape, color, gender – fixed and fluid, was represented. She’s making it clear sex is for everyone, not just the societally defined beautiful ones.
I wandered in and out of rooms until three minutes had passed, and I was led into a glass elevator to go up a floor. Through the elevator walls, I watched a video scene of a couple having sex in an elevator. It’s a common fantasy and a fractal experience: riding in an elevator while watching sex in an elevator.
The second floor got a bit more intense. There were abstract paintings on the wall that, when you touched them, came to life with full-color videos of LGBTQIA sex scenes. I watched men with men, women with women, mixed-race multipartner scenes, and one scene of a guy going down on what I think was a male-to-female trans person. The whole thing was edgy, confronting, and as artfully presented as hardcore porn could be.
Another room had four pink ear sculptures, inviting you to place your head next to them and hear the spatial audio of various couples having sex. Unlike the last area, this one left plenty to the imagination. The next room was the library. There were floor-to-ceiling shelves stuffed full of books. Some sparkled as an invitation to pull them off the shelf. I grabbed the first one; it opened and hovered before me. As I flipped the pages, photos and videos of various people having sex in every imaginable way came to life.
The last room was a traditional peep show, where you were in a private theater and pushing a button opened the curtain to reveal a video scene. It was the first time I felt like I was alone, as all the other spaces were shared. The virtual privacy provided a sense of relief and safety, which I didn’t know I needed. Watching all of those different sex scenes with other people, even though they were only floating avatars and couldn’t tell what I was seeing (I think), created an underlying anxiety I didn’t expect. Did they notice me staring at the gay sex scene?
The time was up on this floor, and we returned to the elevator. Now we were going down (just stop it) to the basement. Or I should say the dungeon, where I witnessed some light BDSM scenes. One room had two orbs that, when you put your head inside, you saw a 360-degree 3D video of a warehouse, with several different kink scenes taking place. People were tied up, and others applied various impact techniques with paddles and floggers. Was that a whip?
The next room had some more extreme apparatus. Pulling down on one of the chains suspended from the ceiling lifted a curtain and exposed a BDSM video. The other chain revealed another. It was another of several clever interaction models that encouraged exploration. One of the reasons I believe VR is the superior technology for immersive experiences is interactivity. I’ve done domes and projection-mapped experiences, but the lack of interactivity leaves me feeling flat and ultimately bored. For the generations raised on video games (pretty much everyone now), we want to have some sense of doing something.
Our ten minutes were up. It felt like at least twice that, and I could have easily spent a half hour exploring and watching. I found the experience way better than I expected. It felt like art. It was confronting, edgy, and titillating. (I know I said that already, but it’s worth saying again.) Seeing so many different types of humans, all in the throes of passion, representing every type of gender and sexual identity, is hard to experience elsewhere. The rapid flow of moving from heterosexual to queer scenes makes me question what I was excited by. It all seemed to merge into one experience, which has me to this day questioning my sense of sexual interests.
Great art is supposed to make you question things. There are many great VR experiences out there that accomplish that. But not many of them are commercial successes. I suspect that Univrse, Layers of Reality, and Erica Lust might have just discovered a new business model for the adult entertainment industry. One that can proudly enter the mainstream at the intersection of art, erotica, and technology. Public porn has primarily lived in seedy back alleys and behind decrepit video stores. But this experience deserves to be front and center in great cities like Barcelona, San Francisco, Berlin, and other culturally open places where people embrace sexuality and innovation.
But beyond porn and adult content, this experience showed me that free-roam VR is capable of almost anything. It has virtually no limits. I keep watching hundreds of millions poured into large-scale immersive attractions like COSM, The VOID, and other projection attractions offering zero interactivity. You guys are missing something so obvious it pains me. For about a grand per person in hardware, you can offer transformative, educational entertainment for which people will pay $3 a minute. What on earth are you waiting for?
