VR might offer full immersion, but AR could be a whole other, wildly arousing ball game

In Seeing Is Arousing: Looking at Augmented Reality’s Erotic Potential – Part 1 we had a rather quick crash-course in what AR is, how it’s different that virtual reality, and some teases of what it could mean in regards to sex.

Now it’s time to explore that erotic potential in much more detail—and see how the power of augmented reality lies not just in replacing reality but in illuminating what we hadn’t been able to see before.

Augmented desires

As was said in our first article, while virtual reality has the allure of creating a totally immersive experience, augmented reality has the promise of enhancing what is already there with all kinds of pertinent information.

This means that using AR glasses you’ll be able to look at the world around you and visually know whatever anyone wants to share with you. Think of looking at someone and seeing, immediately their About Me page.

Not only that but the system will be interactive. Looking at someone you might see you are a potential sexual match, so you send them a digital wink. If they like that, they might respond in kind, without a word being exchanged and with clear boundaries of communication.

If you might be nervous about sharing sexual interests with everyone it no doubt could be configured to hide your info and make it visible only to others with similar turn-ons.

For example, a glance at someone walking down the street and, superimposed over your vision, a little emoji for your favorite kink pops up over someone’s head: possible playmate found!

Best of all worlds?

The possibilities are really fascinating. With AR hardware you could “throw” a window onto any surface—as it only exists as a projection into your own vision. Need to send a text or email? A sheet of virtual paper appears on the tabletop in front of you, allowing you to either dictate or even type, using tracking software looking at your fingertips on a similarly virtual keyboard.

Erotic images could be similarly tossed on any surface, shared from a lover or playmate or just to spruce up a drab city. Another part of the smart system being that it wouldn’t block or distract you from doing whatever it is you need to be doing. There’s no reason why it couldn’t monitor your real-world position and flick away an overlay that could be a dangerous distraction.

RECOMMENDED READ: How VR/AR Could Dial Sexual Intimacy To Eleven and Beyond

But, at its core, AR is all about information. Think about how much less confusing and difficult the world could be if you could look at someone and know what they wanted or needed—especially sexually. Gone could very well be doubts around not just possible erotic interest, but also things like language, preferred gender address, and so much more.

This is also true in regards to safety. As the AR system would monitor your position as well as provide a recording system, if anyone chooses to ignore what you are putting out into the world you could instantly give them an AR thumbs down—or even alert the police if needed.

Augmented reality will enhance our view of the world around us, but it also has the possibility of changing what we see.

Virtual vs augmented

VR is kind of all-or-nothing: it swaps out the real world for a synthetic one. But what makes augmented reality full of so many possibilities is that it could overlay part of what we see but also, like VR, supplant it as well.

Think of it this way: for a VR system to be effective it has to get rid of that pesky real world. This is why most VR rigs block any of the wearer’s normal vision.

With AR, however, it normally just supplants what the wearer sees. But a hybrid augmented reality system would allow people to switch back and forth. This would be particularly easy for a contact lens version of AR as the glasses form would more-than-likely have some bleeding in reality around the frames.

Here’s where the fun begins! Imagine looking at your lover and seeing a playful road map of erogenous zones, perhaps biometrically symbolized by levels of arousal?

Or, at a moment’s notice, you could be able to superimpose anything you or your partner desires over your intimate scene. Want make love to a cartoon or anime character? How about looking back at your own face? Or even play with concepts of gender or sexual orientation by visually replacing your partner with a mix-and-match of erotic images?

And we haven’t even touched on the impact that haptic tech will have on augmented reality: when the day comes that we will not just be able to see whatever we desire but also have the illusion of touch as well.

Gazing toward new delights

Of all the technological breakthroughs in sexual exploration arriving or coming soon, augmented reality shows perhaps the greatest potential for not just physical pleasure, but in truly enhancing how we’ll understand and relate to one another.

Ignorance has long been a burden of humanity. But with augmented reality’s promise of breaking down barriers, of giving and sharing personal information, it could very well mean the end of not knowing and, even more importantly, not caring about anyone.

Image sources: Depositphotos

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The sextech industry can’t wait to explore the technology’s erotic potential

The next, upgraded iteration of Apple’s mixed reality headset may arrive early next year or as late as the next year, but that hasn’t stopped explicit content creators from preparing for its arrival and the delights in store for their VR customer base.

Details are scant, though sites like 9to5 seem fairly certain the new Apple Vision Pro 2 will include the faster, more efficient M4 or M5 chip; an improved neck and head stress-reducing head strap; and, according to this Bloomberg article, a method to “increase the number of cores inside of the neural engine—a component for processing artificial intelligence tasks.”  

The article further explains, “The neural engine in the current Vision Pro includes 16 cores, a measure of processing power. These capabilities are critical for a device that relies on AI for the live processing of imagery and applications in complex virtual environments.”

Lighter, more powerful, more comfortable—and cheaper?

Often heralded as a significant step towards realizing the immersive potential of augmented and mixed reality, the initial Apple Vision Pro nevertheless received mixed reviews, mostly due to its prohibitively steep price point.  

However, starting at $3,499, excluding the cost of special prescription lenses, and nearly $3,899 for the one-terabyte model, wasn’t the only thing holding it back.  

As another Bloomberg piece noted its awkward heaviness, few supported apps, display glare, and while in-store demonstrations generated interest, they ended up promising, “Consumers on an experience that doesn’t quite exist yet.”

RECOMMENDED READ: 2D to VR: How AI Will Give Adult Entertainment an Exciting New Dimension

My own brief time spent with the headset backs this up, as I felt an odd combination of excitement at what it might offer in the future and frustration that I couldn’t take one home.

Unfortunately, while very little is known about what the Apple Vision Pro 2 might be like, there’s little—or more accurately, less than nothing—reported regarding whether it’ll ever be anything but an overpriced novelty.

Looking beyond the arousing horizon

Meager details aside, what the Apple Vision Pro 2 could be has at least one popular virtual reality adult platform all-a-twitter.  

SexLikeReal, which hosts thirteen thousand different titles from nearly two hundred different studios, doesn’t shy away from fresh-out-of-the-box sex tech innovations. The website was quick to support interactive devices, such as those made by Kiiroo and Lovense.

This commitment to innovation helps explain why, in a company blog post, SexLikeReal predicts the Apple Vision Pro 2’s greater comfort and particularly its higher resolution displays will boost customer passthrough, claiming “scenes will feel even closer to performers being in your space. Switch between full VR and passthrough in seconds, without breaking immersion.”

Just like being there—but not yet?

Immersion, after all, is what augmented reality is all about: while VR drops the viewer into a completely digital space, AR — and its close cousin, Mixed Reality — projects a person, place, or thing over the wearer’s existing environment.

Or, to put it another way, by donning something like the current or upcoming Apple Vision Pro 2, you could see and eventually even interact via Bluetooth-enabled smart devices with the adult entertainer sitting on the edge of your bed.

However, the Apple Vision Pro showed that, although the sextech and adult entertainment industries may be eager for the technology, we may have several years before AR’s immersive power is fully realized.

Beginning with what Bloomberg and others anticipate: reduced weight and greater user comfort, a larger selection of apps and further support for existing sites and programs, and—more than anything—lowering hardware costs.

A challenging proposition, to be sure. Notably, regarding price, boosting next-gen AR gear isn’t the same as doing so with VR, where the latter requires maxed-out processing power to not only power and head-track a pair of high-definition displays but also seamlessly match content with whatever the wearer is already looking at.

But as with tech advances from artificial intelligence tech to 3D printing, easy, affordable, fully immersive, and completely interactive AR systems are inevitable—and however long they take to arrive, you know the adult entertainment industry will be ready, willing, and absolutely able to take full advantage of AR’s erotically-awesome possibilities.

Image Sources: Depositphotos

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Affordable, easy to use, and possibly perfect for immersive, explicit content

As low-cost, readily accessible VHS and DVD players fueled the enjoy-at-home sexual media revolution, the recent release of the Meta Quest 3s mixed reality entertainment system might encourage a massive new wave of virtual and augmented, fully interactive,and immersive, explicit movies and gamessurely —while surely boosting the development of other equally affordable mixed-reality rigs.

A lot of bang for scant bucks

Until the arrival of the Meta Quest 3s, a majority of augmented reality headsets tended to offer either a less-than-satisfying experience or a groundbreaking level of immersion for a staggeringly high price as with the Apple Vision Pro, 

What the Meta Quest 3s does is meet these two extremes in the middle. For only $299 (not including extras). Meta Quest 3s offers high definition and smooth performance that is almost—but not quite—as good as the Apple Vision Pro. And that’s not bad, considering $3,499 for Apple Vision Pro’s base model.

RECOMMENDED READ: Apple’s Vision Pro: A Glimpse of Adult Entertainment’s Future?

With such a massive cost disparity, it’s hard to believe reviewers have edged the Meta Quest 3s ahead of Apple Vision Pro—and not only for its affordability.

Scot Stein, a respected reviewer at CNET points to the Apple Vision Pro’s advanced technology, saying it’s a crucial first step toward what augmented reality may someday become—though, alas, a prohibitively expensive one, “whereas the Quest platform is five years old. Meta had VR hardware for years before that, too,” makes the Meta Quest 3s a superior option—for now, that is  

Ideal for adult entertainment?

In his review, Stein also notes another key difference between the two: “Quest headsets can do one thing Vision Pro can’t, though: Play 360-degree and VR180 video content on YouTube and elsewhere on the web.”

On the surface, perhaps a less-than-stellar compliment, but given the adult entertainment industry’s tendency to deliver material as cheaply as possible, the Meta Quest 3s may be precisely what the industry needs to get augmented reality content from a curious novelty to a full-blown, sexually explicit media mainstay.

Sure, people may prefer their interactive, immersive adult videos and games on something like an Apple Vision Pro, but producing anything for it is likely to be prohibitively expensive.  Not forgetting that more people will be able to afford the far less expensive Meta Quest 3s than the Apple Vision Pro.

Ready to take the next immersive step?

Augmented reality is, to a relatively small extent, already here.  Several adult entertainment sites already offer some sort of AR content.  The difference between today’s and tomorrow’s is their lack of true immersiveness or talking mixed reality, actual interactivity.  

All of which may completely change for the better, not to mention more sexually exciting, as more and more people get their hands on rigs like the Meta Quest 3s, which, rather than roughly approximating where to place the image of a person or object instead by actively scan the immediate environment can position anything or anyone precisely where it’ll be the most arousingly realistic.

Meta Quest 3s is also good at hand and finger tracking (though Apple Vision Pro is somewhat better). This means that you’ll be better able to interact with your preferred, digitized adult entertainer.

Now, it’s up to the adult industry

With the advent of a technologically advanced but affordable system like Meta Quest 3s, VR/AR and mixed reality headsets are likely to become fully mainstream-major components of home and adult entertainment-just as VHS and DVD players did so long ago. I’m counting on the adult entertainment industry to know a good and profitable thing when they see it!

We’ve already seen—and will continue to see—how affordable entertainment technologies spur the production of new adult content, and vice versa. Considering how incredibly immersive and interactive headsets like the Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest 3s already are, the adult entertainment industry could end up giving us mind-blowing explicit experiences like nothing we’ve seen before.

Image Sources: Wikipedia Commons, Depositphotos

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