Now, I understand that porn is a controversial subject and the ethics of the industry are sometimes questionable. Personally, I am more interested in pornstars who identify as sex-positive and enjoy doing what they do (think ‘Belladonna’ — the Vice documentary is a must-watch if you’re a fan). I admire anyone who is passionate about their job, irrespective of the industry.

Behind closed doors, we’re all aware of how popular porn is. It is not without reason that a famous pornstar like Sunny Leone has been welcomed to reinvent herself as a Bollywood star. There is a section of the industry that functions like any other creative industry; with each director trying to find something more creative to add to the mix. Virtual reality porn was born out of one such experiment.

The porn industry in itself is an interesting one. The industry’s revenue runs into several billions, and in many ways, it acts as a heavyweight when it comes to driving technology. Due to the nature of the industry, it allows for experimentation and provides the most willing audience base to be experimented on.

As a teenager, I remember downloading a dancing stripper on my Windows 98 machine, who would pop out of the Start bar on command, something I had never seen before! Many of today’s defining tech started with porn, such as card payments, Blu-ray, greater bandwidth (to facilitate free flow of images and videos) and so on. Even Snapchat with its 150 million active users, was primarily an app that was meant for sexting and pornstars were quick to catch on, although they were banned later by Snapchat.

Who Am I?

Before I start, I thought I should give you a brief introduction as to who I am. I go by the pen name of Mr A. I am a in my early thirties, straight, a sex-positive man who has a healthy sex life. I am by no means frustrated, but I enjoy spending some quality alone time every now and then. I am quite comfortable with my body, and I am pretty certain I know my pleasure points far better than anyone else. At least up until this point.

I firmly believe in the Charles Eames quote “Take your pleasure seriously.” I believe we all have different needs, and to a large extent, especially in India, our morality drives our desires and we are all in some way restricted and frustrated. I strongly recommend ridding yourself of moral judgements, if any, before reading this article any further.

As an engineering student, I felt the need to write about this experiment like a lab record entry. I hope you will excuse me for following the format.

The aim

To experience VR porn and understand its merits and demerits.

The apparatus

I own a OnePlus 2 and after some research, I decided to buy the Knox V2 to use as my VR viewer. It’s available online if you want or you can always ask your friends in the US to bring you one when they visit; it’s only a viewer — not a sex toy — so it is legal. The viewer is reasonably priced, the device is pretty plain-jane; cardboards with lenses whose quality or power is not mentioned anywhere. It comes in a slide off cover, no elaborate packing, very unlike most of the devices we buy. Once unpacked, it took me a few seconds to notice the illustrated instructions and attach my phone to it.

As soon as you’ve set up, you need to download the Cardboard app available on Google Playstore for setup. This app allows for your very first VR experience using your phone, it has a few demos to make you experience what VR feels like and I have to admit — it felt pretty damn cool.

The controls

There is only one button on the top of the viewer that allows you to select objects on the VR screen. While playing videos, you have three options; re-centre, play/pause and progress bar. While these options are enough to move through the video, it can be frustrating if you want to watch a different video, because that means removing the phone from the viewer and using your fingers to browse through — like normal.

The experience

Let’s jump right into the interesting parts, shall we? Pornhub has a category dedicated to VR. The best part about VR is that most of the videos are in first person, ie “you” are the pornstar. The disappointing part is that it almost always assumes you’re white, have a six-pack and a huge penis, but this was expected. While some of the videos on Pornhub are great, I found that many of the videos are blurry and not focused. This is probably because I own a cardboard viewer, but since some videos work perfectly — I can’t help but think it’s the videos that are faulty.

After some searching, I came across this Naughty America video. A brand I used to trust while growing up, and needless to say, the quality was much better than the rest. I am not going into the detail of the video, it had its usual cheesy-porn bits. The greatest thing about VR is that you can look anywhere in the room and this dimensional enhancement makes a massive difference. They say the difference between sex and porn is that sex has physiological aspects like eye contact, touch, smell and so on. The most powerful part of my VR porn experience was that I was able to shift my gaze around through the scene and make eye contact with the girl, this made the experience so real. It felt so real that I admit, my hands were tempted to reach out while I was watching.

The only downside of the whole experience was me feeling slightly disoriented after I took my viewer off. I also have a mild headache, but I don’t think I should blame it on VR — it could just be that the long day I’ve had is taking a toll on me.

If you’re a woman, the choice of VR porn is very limited and I suspect this is an area that will be slow to pick up.

Conclusion

VR porn takes it one step closer to the real deal and that is both scary and good, sometimes scary good. Holding the viewer up with my hands while I had my earphones plugged in, is not a completely hands free experience and that was slightly annoying.

Granted, VR porn addiction is a potential danger, but as of now, even the VR companies realise that keeping the headset on for more than 20 minutes is difficult for most users. But if they’re able to handle the niggles, this could be a game-changer; helping people get one step closer to realising sexual fantasies. We must also find other things to do with VR viewers, dare it become the sex toy that we hide from others.

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