NEW YORK CITY—Virtual reality (VR) is almost certainly the future of recorded adult entertainment, and what with Google practically giving away viewers that work with almost any smartphone, more and more people will be trying out the concept every day.
But as was the case even before the official adult video industry was founded, amateurs were making tapes of themselves and others having sex and selling the footage to companies like Homegrown Video, or even packagers who advertised in the back of Rolling Stone magazine—so why can't something similar also happen with VR?
Well, maybe that possibility is closer than many think.
B&H PhotoVideo is a well-known supplier of almost all things photo- or video-related, and one of their most recent ads features the 3DPro12 Stereoscopic 3D 360° Plug-n-Play Holder (pictured; pay no attention to the anaglyph glasses) from manufacturer 360Heroes, and while that's a mouthful, the concept is pretty simple: Insert 12 GoPro 3, 3+ or 4 digital video cameras into the 3DPro12 housing (first making sure they're all charged up, of course), put the 3DPro12 onto a tripod, hit the record button on each camera, and you're ready to rock.
"Orienting the cameras spherically in stereoscopic pairs, the holder allows you to create 3D spherical content at resolutions up to 6000 x 3000 pixels," the ad says. "The holder is constructed from a single piece of aircraft-grade flexible nylon, with each camera slot numbered. Its configuration allows you to shoot at distances as close as 4.5' from your subject."
And it can all be yours for just under a thousand bucks, plus tax and shipping.
Of course, the word "all" might be a bit misleading. For instance, the GoPro cameras themselves aren't included, and they go for about $500 a pop—and since you'll need 12 of them, that's about a $6,000 additional expenditure right there. Also, as the ad notes, "In order to combine each stereoscopic camera pairs and stitch all of the footage together to create spherical video, separately available software is required."
Also offered by B&H is the 360 CamMan V2 VR Media Management system, which, according to the ad, "is a virtual reality data file management software that allows you to manage large numbers of cameras and files simultaneously. It lets you prep your files and drag-and-drop data into your video stitching software. It converts hours of file management into just minutes." That's $225, and note that the price doesn't include that video stitching software.
For that, you'll need something like the VideoStitch Studio v2 VR Video Stitching Software, which is PC and Mac compatible (most programs apparently are only PC compatible), and which will allow the user to "Create Immersive 360° Spherical VR," preview the end product in real time, and provides "Exposure and Color Correction Keyframes" as well as "Automatic & Manual Calibration & Sync" and "Video Stabilization." Fortunately, that'll only set you back $745.
Okay; so maybe all this will cost an arm and a leg—and possibly your first-born—but hey! Now You Can Create Your Own Sexy VR At Home!
