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Here’s What It’s Like to Watch VR Porn on a Tube Site

The experience was eye opening.
Image: Nicholas Deleon

Earlier today, Motherboard received a press release from a company called VR Innovation announcing an exciting development in the world of adult entertainment, as seen below:

Image: Nicholas Deleon

As Motherboard's resident consumer tech editor, I felt it was my duty to thoroughly test the VR porn tube site ("SC" is shorthand for Short Circuit, our consumer tech section):

Image: Nicholas Deleon

Unlike my previous experience with VR porn, which necessitated several tech support emails, copy-and-pasting files between different folders on an Android smartphone, and then using a dedicated VR video app, Virp.io's "tube site" technology works merely by visiting it with a smartphone web browser like Safari or Chrome. Just like with BaDoink VR and Dorcel Media's technology, you can look up and down, and side to side to control the viewpoint of the action—you feel like you're right there!

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Here's a non-VR, SFW-ish screenshot of a scene before everything goes down:

Image: Nicholas Deleon

Cool shoes, dude.

If there's one major critique I have is that using Google Cardboard to watch porn simply isn't practical because you have to hold the Cardboard unit up to your face for the duration of the session. That's… suboptimal. I suppose you could wrap a rubberband around your head (or use a more expensive headset like the Gear VR or Oculus Rift), but that seems like an awful lot of effort. The video quality was also lower than the files I used with the Samsung Gear VR in October, but then again tube sites aren't exactly known for their audio-visual fidelity.

Overall, I'd say VR porn is still merely in the "neat" phase: it's a novelty that's not quite there yet, technology-wise. That being said, I look forward to further developments as more powerful hardware (such as the upcoming consumer version of the Oculus Rift, which is due early next year) becomes more readily available.

Wired:

Works with any smartphone browser

Minimal setup

Instant streaming

Tired:

Poor user experience (who wants to hold Cardboard to their face while, you know…)

Low-res video

Amount of "tube-style" streaming content is limited (though there's plenty of traditional downloadable VR porn content that's separately available from the website)