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Technology shifts may change things as well. I imagine wide spread adoption of VR viewers is going to create a new market for instance that might be 'premium'.

Technology shifts may change things as well. I imagine wide spread adoption of VR viewers is going to create a new market for instance that might be 'premium'. Or some integration with internet of things devices (tele-dildonics anyone?)...

gizmo686 11y ago
I suspect that we will see porn take advantage of these new technologies (in fact, I have seen internet controlled vibes). However, I doubt that the quality will be substantially higher. The one way I can see this technology leading to higher quality is by centralizing capital in a much smaller number of producers, who then have the resources to produce higher quality porn. However, they also would have much more of a monopoly, so I am not sure how well this will work out; and eventually production of new style porn will become more democratized. The bigger change we need to make is social/economic. Porn simply does not have the monitization avenues that film does. Mainstream advertisers don't want to touch it, and consumers are reluctant to pay for it. This puts us in a situation where, as the author describes, most porn is itself produced as an ad for other sex services.
- meric 11y ago
  The next phase of democratisation of porn could be a proliferation of portable VR recorders that will be invented later this century.
  - soylentcola 11y ago
    The problem with a portable VR recorder is that VR ideally records the whole volume of a space in 3 dimensions. People are developing camera arrays that do a decent approximation of 360-degree, 3d video through multiple wide angle lenses and software stitching and interpolation. But I think that the real "wow" moment will come when you can plug in 3 or more affordable, high-definition video and depth cameras around a room. The way I envision it, you have a power outlet on each of the four walls in a room, but higher up instead of near the ground. Into each outlet you plug in something that looks like a webcam but acts like a high def version of a Kinect or similar. Each cameras records both depth info and video. The cameras communicate wirelessly with a computer or other base unit that's running the "brains" of the operation. It receives the video and depth info and composites it into a live 3d model of the room with the video info used to create texture maps. I've done some really basic experiments with a single Kinect and the Oculus dev kit and they look about as good as you'd imagine. Blocky, flickery shapes, only viewable from one angle, with jagged edges and funky video. Still, it's already pretty cool looking. It already feels like something where incremental improvements in capture hardware and processing can make this very usable. Then once you've got these sorts of live 3d environments, it's just a matter of encoding, compressing, and transmitting the data over networks before you've got a decent semblance of live telepresence. I know this is a tangent from the porn discussion but as with a lot of tech, porn could easily be the industry to push development. I can imagine that live sex shows with real performers would be seen as premium services that companies can charge for (and *Tube sites couldn't immediately duplicate).
- prawn 11y ago
  I've seen some porn created for the Oculus Rift which is high quality. Once VR is accessible and the media is out there, it will dominate. Even with the DK1, it's a step up.
  - plonh 11y ago
    VR seems mainly for providing an environment ("celestial sphere"). To use it to examine a target (such as a human performer) you'd gave to walk around in a ring, which seems a weird movement while watching porn. Unless you were watching a scene with many performers?
    - soylentcola 11y ago
      I've also got an Oculus dev unit (dk2) and must admit to checking out some of the porn content out there for it. Right now it seems to fall into two main categories: wide angle 3d movies and virtual scenes/environments. In the former, you're looking at mostly paid/premium content that is ideally played in the company's player application. Still, it works in some other more general VR players. These are shot with cameras that, while not 3d/360 due to current tech limitations, give the illusion of sitting in front of performer(s) doing your typical sexy stuff. It generally mirrors the viewer's assumed seated position so it gives the illusion of watching a live sex show. You can turn your head and look around to some extent but doing 3d/360 is still difficult due to the way dual-camera 3d works. There are several non-porn examples of this as well. The latter is more like CG porn since the tools for creating and viewing 3d graphics in VR are a lot more established. The flip side is that you're basically watching video game porn. Some of the stuff that can be done in Unity or Unreal Engine is pretty realistic, just like your average modern AAA video game but in the end, it's still cartoon porn so it will appeal to some but not others. On the viewing side, it's more flexible since you can turn around in a full 360 degrees and change your viewpoint just like any other CG virtual environment. Basically the live stuff is like the evolution of 3D movies while the CG stuff is an evolution of video games.
    - prawn 11y ago
      Even at this stage, it's more immersive and convincing, regardless of whether you can walk around or not. Outside of changing positions, people tend not to 'walk around in a ring examining their partner' during the real thing either. As with a video, it's position-transition-position-transition, etc. I think we'll see real performers developing celestial sphere content, and motion capture/CGI handling anything beyond that which isn't on rails. Just saying, don't write off the former once more people have the hardware.

gizmo686 11y ago

I suspect that we will see porn take advantage of these new technologies (in fact, I have seen internet controlled vibes). However, I doubt that the quality will be substantially higher. The one way I can see this technology leading to higher quality is by centralizing capital in a much smaller number of producers, who then have the resources to produce higher quality porn. However, they also would have much more of a monopoly, so I am not sure how well this will work out; and eventually production of new style porn will become more democratized. The bigger change we need to make is social/economic. Porn simply does not have the monitization avenues that film does. Mainstream advertisers don't want to touch it, and consumers are reluctant to pay for it. This puts us in a situation where, as the author describes, most porn is itself produced as an ad for other sex services.

meric 11y ago
The next phase of democratisation of porn could be a proliferation of portable VR recorders that will be invented later this century.
- soylentcola 11y ago
  The problem with a portable VR recorder is that VR ideally records the whole volume of a space in 3 dimensions. People are developing camera arrays that do a decent approximation of 360-degree, 3d video through multiple wide angle lenses and software stitching and interpolation. But I think that the real "wow" moment will come when you can plug in 3 or more affordable, high-definition video and depth cameras around a room. The way I envision it, you have a power outlet on each of the four walls in a room, but higher up instead of near the ground. Into each outlet you plug in something that looks like a webcam but acts like a high def version of a Kinect or similar. Each cameras records both depth info and video. The cameras communicate wirelessly with a computer or other base unit that's running the "brains" of the operation. It receives the video and depth info and composites it into a live 3d model of the room with the video info used to create texture maps. I've done some really basic experiments with a single Kinect and the Oculus dev kit and they look about as good as you'd imagine. Blocky, flickery shapes, only viewable from one angle, with jagged edges and funky video. Still, it's already pretty cool looking. It already feels like something where incremental improvements in capture hardware and processing can make this very usable. Then once you've got these sorts of live 3d environments, it's just a matter of encoding, compressing, and transmitting the data over networks before you've got a decent semblance of live telepresence. I know this is a tangent from the porn discussion but as with a lot of tech, porn could easily be the industry to push development. I can imagine that live sex shows with real performers would be seen as premium services that companies can charge for (and *Tube sites couldn't immediately duplicate).
prawn 11y ago
I've seen some porn created for the Oculus Rift which is high quality. Once VR is accessible and the media is out there, it will dominate. Even with the DK1, it's a step up.
- plonh 11y ago
  VR seems mainly for providing an environment ("celestial sphere"). To use it to examine a target (such as a human performer) you'd gave to walk around in a ring, which seems a weird movement while watching porn. Unless you were watching a scene with many performers?
  - soylentcola 11y ago
    I've also got an Oculus dev unit (dk2) and must admit to checking out some of the porn content out there for it. Right now it seems to fall into two main categories: wide angle 3d movies and virtual scenes/environments. In the former, you're looking at mostly paid/premium content that is ideally played in the company's player application. Still, it works in some other more general VR players. These are shot with cameras that, while not 3d/360 due to current tech limitations, give the illusion of sitting in front of performer(s) doing your typical sexy stuff. It generally mirrors the viewer's assumed seated position so it gives the illusion of watching a live sex show. You can turn your head and look around to some extent but doing 3d/360 is still difficult due to the way dual-camera 3d works. There are several non-porn examples of this as well. The latter is more like CG porn since the tools for creating and viewing 3d graphics in VR are a lot more established. The flip side is that you're basically watching video game porn. Some of the stuff that can be done in Unity or Unreal Engine is pretty realistic, just like your average modern AAA video game but in the end, it's still cartoon porn so it will appeal to some but not others. On the viewing side, it's more flexible since you can turn around in a full 360 degrees and change your viewpoint just like any other CG virtual environment. Basically the live stuff is like the evolution of 3D movies while the CG stuff is an evolution of video games.
  - prawn 11y ago
    Even at this stage, it's more immersive and convincing, regardless of whether you can walk around or not. Outside of changing positions, people tend not to 'walk around in a ring examining their partner' during the real thing either. As with a video, it's position-transition-position-transition, etc. I think we'll see real performers developing celestial sphere content, and motion capture/CGI handling anything beyond that which isn't on rails. Just saying, don't write off the former once more people have the hardware.