The adult business is looking to AR after VR’s popularity.
After years of tinkering, Andreas Hronopoulos thinks he’s found the capability to beam strippers into living rooms.
Naughty America CEO Hronopoulos has been dabbling with augmented and virtual reality for years. Naughty America introduced one of the first augmented reality apps for mobile phones in 2018, allowing users to superimpose adult models over their phone cameras. Mobile AR was a novelty that people tried once and then forgot about.
Meta released their Quest Pro VR headset in October. A set of strategically positioned cameras on the outside of the $1,500 headgear allows it to mix holograms and other virtual features with a video view of the actual world. Hronopoulos got a Quest Pro right away, tried it with his company’s 3D content, and had a revelation.
“Wow, that’s the product,” he recalls thinking. “Augmented reality.”
Cam sites to VR porn
Adult entertainment has always been a tech pioneer. The early online video streaming and subscription services broadcast pornography. Adult cam sites preceded Twitch. Porn studios were enthusiastic early adopters of consumer VR headsets a decade ago.
Meta and other VR headset companies don’t comment on adult entertainment’s popularity. VR headsets have long been popular for watching videos. “Immersive media is clearly one of the top three applications,” declared Oculus CTO John Carmack, who left Meta, in a late 2019 keynote speech. Many VR headset customers watch pornographic videos after seeing family-friendly films.
Since 2015, Naughty America has released new adult VR videos every week. Because they can charge more per clip than for another programming, many studios have followed suit. Hronopoulos calls it the best adult entertainment. “Real money.”
Tech issues
Adult AR is newer than VR. Real Girls Now, introduced by Naughty America, contains short films of adult performers dancing around stripper poles and striking other suggestive stances. Hronopoulos has shot 50 minutes of footage in a holographic capture studio with dozens of cameras capturing a performer from all angles. “It’s complicated,” he admits.
Limitations exist in the method. Occlusion prevents even the greatest camera arrays from capturing anything behind another object or person. Real Girls Today mostly includes single performers who don’t hang out. Hronopoulos says Real Girls Now does not have sex scenes.
His company recently created Virtual Sex World, an AR site with animated characters instead of real people. Animation makes explicit content easier to produce and upload more often. Hronopoulos feels animation is more iterative. He thinks these two AR methods suit diverse tastes. “We’re seeing what people want,” he says. “Both have a market.”
Its market is young. Meta has not revealed Quest Pro sales numbers, but it targets professionals and prosumers. Apple’s rumored $3,000 mixed reality headset with pass-through video will likely be the same. Last October, Meta enabled pass-through video on its cheaper Quest 2 headset, which has low-resolution, black-and-white outward-facing cameras that produce Blair Witch Project-like images.
Empowering viewers
Meta’s upcoming consumer VR headset could boost adult AR later this year. That cheaper gadget will offer mixed reality with color pass-through video like the Quest Pro. Meta and Apple intend to sell lightweight AR glasses. Hronopoulos is betting on that future and believes AR technology will revolutionize adult entertainment.
Currently, adult videos follow a conventional script, recording poses, and body parts to appeal to the audience. Hronopoulos first observed when he started showing off his company’s VR videos at industry gatherings that AR and VR could provide viewers more control over a video.
Hronopoulos says VR viewers may not be gazing where a camera would. He says they want to see models’ eyes.
AR enhances viewer agency. Viewers can beam a model into their living rooms (or bedrooms) and wander about them, choosing their viewpoint point and being more engaged in their dreams.
“It’s shifting from observing to experiencing,” Hronopoulos explains.