This article ran in the January 2017 issue of AVN magazine. Click here to see the digital edition.
At the AVN Expo, pictured above, were Ela Darling with Cam4; Charlotte Sartre, Leigh Raven, Penny Pax and Cherie Deville with BurningAngelVR; the VR Bangers Head Rig.
This year’s AVN Adult Entertainment Expo represented something of a revolution for the adult industry. In the last couple of years, live webcam companies have vied with adult studios as the most dominant force on the show floor. But this year companies producing virtual reality (VR) content stepped up in both number and prominence. Though the lines of fans seeking autographs and selfies with stars were longer at the video booths, eight VR-related companies were only too happy to slide a headset over the ears of any expo attendee to give each a taste of how they’ll be enjoying their porn likely in the very near future—if they aren’t doing so already.
Perhaps the company that’s gotten the most mainstream press for its VR products over the past few months in CamSoda, which announced in December that it was offering what it calls “holographic” porn that users could watch on their smartphones using a transparent pyramid “viewer.” Then, as the AVN Expo approached, the company rolled out its OhRoma add-on: A gas-mask-looking device that can be filled with Bluetooth-controlled scent canisters so that VR viewers can not only see and hear their favorite stars perform, but smell them as well.
“We’re the site that’s gonna experiment,” CamSoda CEO Daron Lundeen told Engadget. “If you got a new idea, a new technology that’s out there, we want to grab it, and try it, and use it. ... I think that’s where adult probably has a leg up on most other industries. We can put something like the hologram together very quickly without a whole lot of red tape.”
To be fair, CamSoda’s “holographic” product, dubbed “Holo-Cam,” isn’t actually holographic, in that it’s a video projection—no lasers involved—onto a pyramid-shaped clear plastic screen that can be rotated so the viewer can see, for instance, a woman stripping out of her clothes from four different angles, as fans could see at the company’s booth in Artist Hall. (Another VR company, Holodexxx, had announced a similar product early last year at the show, but it has yet to put anything on the market.)
Perhaps more intriguing, though, was CamSoda’s promise of someone being able to experience a b.j. or cowgirl session with a beautiful woman, using a teledildonic-capable Fleshlight or similar stroker to feel the woman’s mouth or pussy as she’s employing it in the VR, and actually smell her perfume or sweat through the OhRoma mask as she’s riding the user’s cock into a real-life orgasm.
“Quite simply, OhRoma takes the virtual reality experience to the next level,” Lundeen told TechCrunch. “It’s unlike anything anyone has ever experienced before, delivering a heightened sensation of pure unadulterated ecstasy, allowing them to completely immerse themselves in the experience, and we’re excited for our fans to try it out.”
The idea of adding smell to a visual presentation is hardly new. Since the 1950s, producers have on rare occasions released movies where the price of admission included either a scratch ’n’ sniff card which audience members were invited to employ at various points to give them a whiff of the action they were seeing, or they simply released the scent right into the theater’s ventilation system, as was done with the 1960 film Scent of Mystery. Even AVN got into the swing of things in 1996 when it brought to market Smells Like ... Sex, a video feature released on laserdisc that included its own scratch ’n’ sniff card.
To create its OhRoma system, CamSoda went to companies that already provide aromas to supplement print advertising—remember those ads in Playboy or Penthouse where the edge of the page is folded over, and when unfolded, the scent of perfume or cologne is released?—to create tiny canisters which, when loaded into the OhRoma mask, allow users to smell such things as “body odor,” “private parts,” “panties,” “fragrances” and other hopefully aphrodisiac scents.
Which isn’t to say the system is working perfectly: CamSoda sent some samples of the “private parts” scent to the folks at Mic.com for testing, and while two of the site’s employees correctly guessed that they were smelling “vagina,” others described the scent as “a musty book,” “dirty socks,” “baby powder with floral notes” and “cod liver oil,” to report a few.
Several adult stars are already excited about the concept, though.
“There are a lot of guys who watch my shows who tell me, ‘God, I wish I could smell you,’” Florida-based cam model Victoria Ryan told David Moye of the Huffington Post. “And some will drop $50 just to buy my panties.”
Ryan describes her personal scent, which she composed herself, as “a fruity musky scent that would blend with a flowery perfume,” though the 22-year-old cautioned, “I imagine I will want to change that smell when I hit MILF status.”
Another star who can’t wait to incorporate scent into her VR products is Ela Darling, who describes herself as “the first VR camgirl.” She co-founded VRTube.xxx in late 2015, as well as Cam4’s live VR division, Cam4VR.
“That is a really exciting thing,” Darling told AVN. “Personally, I’m really driven by scent; like the scent of my partner drives me really insane, so that is something that I’m really hoping to incorporate into Cam4VR soon. It’s kind of a joke, the idea of like Smell-O-Vision, but having someone’s scent, it’s so erotic, so arousing.”
But while scent may be Cam4VR’s future, its present is nearly as exciting.
“We are rolling out a new camera pretty soon,” Darling advised. “It’s got a wide capture space and it’s 3D, a 360 experience. It’s really beautiful, and if you go into a private chat, pretty soon you’ll be able to be voice-to-voice with the performer, so when you speak, she hears you and responds.”
Speaking of new cameras, another company that’s been getting its share of mainstream exposure is VR Bangers, which currently offers about 80 4K, 360-degree VR scenes on its website, adding two each week. But their big debut at AEE was their POV Head Rig—or as UK’s Daily Mail described it, a “terrifying mannequin-head camera”—but in reality, simply a plastic human head fitted with 4K cameras where its eyes would be, and microphones in its “ears.”
“The rig was built especially for adult VR scenes because we noticed that there is a much warmer and more intimate emotional attachment between the performer and the recording device if the device itself is able to be kissed, caressed, and whispered to in the same sort of ways that a real person would sense those subtle communications,” said VR Bangers Chief Technical Officer Boris Smirnoff.
“A lot of our viewers feel that VR is becoming a little bit boring,” added company salesman Neil Abramovich, “so we decided to add more intimacy to our VR videos. We’ve built this special rig so the girls can actually kiss it, and when the viewer’s watching it, it feels like the girl is kissing him touching his cheeks, talking directly to him. We try to use all the major popular stars for our productions, and we’re also adding interactive toys like Fleshlights to give our VR even more realism.”
Another AEE VR exhibitor that made mainstream news in January wasn’t so much being lauded for its technical innovations as much as because it was the only adult content company that had been allowed to exhibit at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES): Naughty America. (Adult companies pulled out of the CES in 1998 after convention officials became openly hostile to the adult exhibitors and actresses, even going so far as to put signs outside the restrooms reading, “Warning: Adult Performers Use These Facilities.”)
“CES was amazing,” said Naughty America Chief Information Officer Ian Paul. “We were just so excited to be the first adult entertainment company in 18 years to be allowed to showcase. It was a great experience. The first day was a little bit rocky as we figured out the lay of the land but after a few hours, the crowds started coming in and the reception was great.”
But Paul soon found that CES’s feelings about adult hadn’t changed much—even though, Back In The Day, CES attendees flocked to the adult exhibits.
“We had to adhere to a number of different rules,” Paul advised. “One of the rules was that we had to be in a room away from the main area. Honestly, if we’d been on the show floor, we would have attracted so much attention that it might have led to the other booths saying, ‘Hey, you know, where are the people who want to see our booths? They’re all over there.’ We weren’t on the same floor. That first day, there was some disagreement as to whether we could have the doors open or closed. On a previous day, they’d said, ‘Oh, you know, keep them open; no problem.’ So we put our signs out, but then the next day they came in and said, ‘You can’t do that. Shut the doors, pull the signs in’—and we were like, you know, how is anyone going to know where we are without a sign at least? And so we got it squared away. We were allowed to have one door open, so that was good, and put out a small sign.
“But a few of the journalists reported we were there,” Paul added, “giving the readers a little bit more detail on where we were and how to find us, and once that got out there and got retweeted and all that, then we had the droves of people coming in and the room was pretty full. The lines were quite long for most of the day. They didn’t exceed the room size, which was good, but there was no shortage of people and at a certain point, we had to close down because the day was ending but even after we shut the doors, we had people knocking—they were excited to try it.”
Naughty America used their booth at AEE mostly to make attendees aware of their existing services.
“Everyone was very, very impressed with our content, and many people remarked that it was surprisingly better than they thought it would be,” Paul said. “Some of the people had tried some of the other VR content that was available for free or via Cardboard, but when you try it on a nicer headset with better quality video, it’s a different experience.”
The company was also touting its recent partnership with toy maker Kiroo, a pioneer in teledildonics.
“Kiroo has this device that lets couples—you know, the woman inserts it into her, the guy puts his Fleshlight on—it lets them watch content together and they can do that in the same room or they can do it remotely across the country,” Paul explained. “So it’s teledildonics, but it may not be so tele and doesn’t have to be so remote, so you can imagine a couple watching Naughty America content together and each of them can have their own unique physical touches going on, depending on what’s happening to the woman, what’s happening to the man, so that’s pretty exciting. And also there will be scenarios for the solo man also. All of our VR videos is point-of-view, and when the girl sits down on you, you’re really going to feel it, her sitting down on you, because of the way the technology works with that tactile object feedback. So imagine the immersion that VR gives you visually and audio, all in that tactile feedback and it’s truly going to give you an immersive experience that hasn’t been experienced before by most users.”
As for what’s ahead, the company is working on augmented reality, or AR, but Paul admitted, “We don’t have a solid plan; there’s different paths we can take to implement some sort of augmented reality product so we hope that this year we’ll have at least a demonstration of the technology available next year.”
Also back for another year at AEE was HoloFilm Productions, promoting their main adult VR site HoloGirls.com—and the big news is that the company is branching out to partner with other adult producers to create branded VR sites for them.
“Our family is expanding,” said HoloFilm CEO Anna Lee. “We’ve got BurningAngelVR that’s now part of the HoloFilm network, so we’re extremely happy about that. Our method of filming has improved; we have new cameras, and we’re allowing people to purchase the camera rigs that we use, so that’ s something brand new that we’re doing for this show, and moving forward, you’ll be able to get one of our HoloFilm rigs and start doing VR yourself.”
Selling/leasing the camera rigs to other adult producers is good for the company in two ways: It puts more field-tested VR cameras into the field, yielding better end results, plus it enables HoloFilm to attract more potential partners to their network.
“Our hope is to expand the HoloFilm family, yes,” Lee agreed, “but also, we’ve put a lot of R&D into the rigs, and we really want to see VR grow and expand, and the more people that are in this field, the more consumers there’ll be and that’s better for everybody, so that’s our attitude toward that.”
HoloFilm’s first partner, Joanna Angel of alt-porn specialist BurningAngel Productions, couldn’t be happier about the arrangement.
“I’m very excited,” Angel told AVN. “I think they’re the leaders of VR in porn. I love working with them, they’re great people and I’ve really learned a lot. I’m very excited to explore this new medium. I know it’s not even that new, but it’s new to me, and it’s been a lot of fun. I’ve been shooting the same kind of stuff for a while; it’s fun to try something else and put my own spin on it.
“I’m in a handful of scenes,” she added, “but also Nikki Hearts, Lily Lane, Leigh Raven, Charlotte Sartre—they’re all at the HoloGirls booth; they have a little BurningAngel section and they’re promoting it. Jaclyn Taylor is also in a handful of scenes, and there are a bunch of Canadian performers I shot as well when I went up to HoloGirls to get trained.”
But although the company now has several VR scenes in the can and ready for distribution, Angel found that getting up to speed on shooting VR wasn’t easy.
“It’s stressful because you kind of have to set up your shot and cross your fingers and hope you’re doing it right because you can’t look at it while you’re shooting and stop and say ‘move your arm, move your leg,’” she admitted. “You could very easily have an entire scene where someone’s arm is cut off because they moved one inch in the wrong direction so it’s—honestly you don’t know until you start editing the footage. We don’t do our own editing yet, but Small Hands is learning how to do it and he understands it really well, but right now Holo’s people are doing the editing. Maybe one thing at a time.”
Last year, HoloFilm’s main product on display was avatar-based VR scenes, where adult performers like Tera Patrick were shot in VR against green screens and rotoscoped into hardcore VR action. But one AEE exhibitor, Japan-based ImagineVR, has put a new spin on animated VR, taking classic Japanese anime characters, converting them into three-dimensional figures and putting them into sexual VR scenes—but with a difference: Along with its anime VR content, the company markets a torso sex doll that’s linked to the on-screen imagery.
“What we have here is the ultimate in VR and sex toys,” said company spokesman Ryosuke Kawado. “Our doll is fitted with a motion sensor, so whenever the doll is repositioned by the user, the action on the screen changes to mirror that position. Right now, we have just four positions. Normal style, riding style, back style and side style, but in future, we hope to make more positions. My partner even puts on his Oculus headset and uses the VR to play with his actual wife.”
Also exhibiting at AEE for the first time was new VR producer Reality Lovers, which has been putting VR scenes online since April of 2016.
“We’ve just started shooting European girls and now with American girls, now in the USA, and we are focusing on British girls and Asian girls and different types of girls, so everyone will find what they want,” noted Reality Lovers spokeswoman Nina. “Right now, we have approximately 100 scenes that users can view.”
Also at the Reality Lovers booth was one of its content shooters, Stefan Geisler of AmazingContent.com, a production company based in the Czech Republic, who can’t wait for VR technology to evolve.
“I always like to compare it to Fred Flintstone’s car,” he said. “This is about the level of technology we have right now. We have to work with cameras that we put together ourselves, and every scene is still experimental. Of course, we have some routines by now, after 60, 70, 80 scenes but it still feels like you’re working with Stone Age technology, because for instance, there’s no camera you can take out of the box and shoot right away. That makes it very complicated compare to regular 2D flat porn.”
That said, Geisler had no problem making a few predictions.
“On the one hand, you will have connected toys, which will be a big thing, where you have a Fleshlight or dildos connected by Bluetooth or similar technology to the viewing device so that you can actually feel what’s going on, so I’m pretty sure [teledildonics] is part of the future. As for adding scent, I’m not sure if that’s a good thing; I think sometimes you wont even want to smell it. Then, this year and next year, there will be a lot of headsets coming out where you don’t need a phone anymore; a lot of headsets with wireless technology where you have built-in displays so you don’t have to put in your phone, where you can broadcast the content directly from your computer to the headset, and that will give you much more comfort in viewing. Then the future step will be starting to mix virtual reality and real reality, so at some point we will be at a point where you have a virtual girl sitting with you on your couch, so I hope that will happen, but I think it will take maybe a few years before we can do that at a financially acceptable level.”
But for now, smartphone-based headsets are the rule, and one manufacturer, RubyVR, also had a booth in Muse Hall. The high-end manufacturer specializes in made-to-order headsets and has released several varieties of VR viewers, including several with individually adjustable lenses. The company, which has been approved by Google, has ties to major content producers including BadoinkVR, VRPorn.com and Gamelink.
“We are just now launching our latest product which is an immersive wrap-around headset that you use to watch 360-degree videos through your mobile device,” explained Senior VP of Sales and Marketing Michael Donohue. “It’s very light, relatively inexpensive, works with all mobile phones and all the reviews so far have been tremendous, so we’re very excited. Just put the cellphone in, flip it closed and you’re ready to go. We’re the last piece of the puzzle.”
VR producer SinVR, which provides virtual online shopping experiences for a variety of companies, brought its latest creation, a VR-based game, to display at the expo.
“SinVR is an interactive adult game that we launched five months ago, in which you have sex with artificially intelligent characters,” explained Eyal Erez. “It’s like visiting HBO’s Westworld but without the violence. What people can expect to see is, they can interact with the characters using their hands. It’s fully interactive; you can move around them, they are talking to you while you do that and it’s really fun.”
Though gameplay currently requires that the headset be connected to a computer, with the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift being the recommended choices, the company is working on a GearVR version that will be playable through Samsung smartphones.
“Our plans for the future are to take it to the next stage,” Erez said, “and in that next stage, you would actually be able to have sex with other people on another VR headset. That’s the future of interactive sex.”
Finally, there was RGBVR, based in Beijing, China, whose business model is to offer “end-to-end VR live and 360-degree 3D panoramic video solutions” to the Asian market, though its appearance at AEE marks the company’s attempt to expand its services worldwide. Though not a content producer, the company offers to set any live-cam producer up with a turnkey operation whose player app can deliver everything from 3D cinema to immersive VR ranging from 180 to 360 degree viewing. The app is available on Google Play and in many Chinese app stores.
Judging from the oohs and aahs coming from AEE attendees who sampled the sexy offerings from the expo’s VR exhibitors, there’s little doubt that virtual reality will be giving adult entertainment’s “real” reality a run for its (and consumers’) money for some time to come—and the adult industry, always on the forefront of technological innovation, is ready to welcome it with open arms.
