Episode 61: Transcript

Episode: 61: The Reality of Virtual Reality

Transcription by Keffy

Annalee: [00:00:00] Welcome to Our Opinions Are Correct, a podcast about science fiction and everything else. I’m Annalee Newitz. I am a science journalist who writes science fiction.

Charlie Jane: [00:00:11] I’m Charlie Jane Anders. I’m science fiction writer who thinks rather a lot about science

Annalee: [00:00:18] And today we’re going to talk about the reality of virtual reality. We’re living through a period where virtual reality, which has been a long time science fictional dream is starting to become real in the world of consumer electronics. But also it’s becoming real in the world of Zoom conferences and Meet conferences and all of these other terrible audio and video meetings that we’ve been having in this quarantine period and it’s kind of taking the shine off of virtual reality.

[00:00:53] So we’re going to talk about all that, plus we have special guest, Fivestar who makes virtual reality porn and she’s going to help us figure out the difference between science fiction virtual reality porn and the reality.

[00:01:08] Intro music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.

Annalee: [00:01:34] So I wanted to start by mentioning the fact that virtual reality has been part of the science fiction idea of the future for a really long time in the same way that flying cars have been part of it or going to space or reanimating dead bodies using electricity. One of the very first representations of virtual reality is in a 1923 novel by E.V. Odle called The Clockwork Man. And this is of course before computers, but there was this idea in the novel, men, not women, just men, have turned themselves into mechanical beings in the far future, and they’ve all basically uploaded their brains to this virtual world where they can have an infinite amount of everything.

Charlie Jane: [00:02:24] Wow.

Annalee: [00:02:24] And they talk a lot about the fact that in this virtual world that they live in, they can have, like, a million suits or a thousand lightbulbs and part of what they love about this world is it’s a kind of infinite industrial production zone, where it’s just a superabundance of everything except women who have rejected that world in the far future and have created a peaceful agrarian society on earth.

[00:02:53] This is portrayed as being incredibly negative, this clockwork world that the men have gone to is viewed by the characters in the novel as a dystopia, basically. And I think that idea of virtual reality has really permeated a lot of stories since then and since the rise of actual virtual reality in the 1980s. You have stuff like Lawnmower Man, where, say what you want about how cheesy that film is, it really sets the tone of virtual reality is kind of evil, it will turn you evil.

[00:03:26] There’s stuff like The Matrix where we all are living in this virtual simulation which is used to enslave us and to blind us to the fact that we’re actually being used by computers as batteries. And now, I think our fantasies about VR are changing a little bit because people are starting to buy things like Oculus or The Vive, which for some reason I bought. And actually experience virtual reality in their homes or go to an arcade and experience it. And suddenly it just feels a lot more real, it’s not a fantasy anymore. And so that’s what I really wanted to talk about today, and I just wanted to ask you, Charlie Jane, how are you feeling about your experiences of going to virtual meetings and virtual conferences and virtual conventions? Does it feel as magical as you always thought it would?

Charlie Jane: [00:04:20] I mean, it’s funny because I don’t really think of a Zoom meeting as being virtual reality because it doesn’t have that immersiveness. I have done some actual VR with a helmet and all that stuff. I played a Star Wars game one time where you have a light saber and you have to hit things with your lightsaber and it was sort of fun for five minutes. I feel like part of the disappointment of the past 20 or 30 years is that most “virtual” spaces don’t really feel real or immersive or that kind of compelling compare to what we sort of dreamed about. Compared to the Holodeck, for example, on Star Trek or The Matrix on Doctor Who, or you name it.

Annalee: [00:05:01] Or the matrix in The Matrix.

Charlie Jane: [00:05:03] Right.

Annalee: [00:05:03] We have this clip from a BBC documentary in 1990 where they describe what it’s going to be like.

BBC Clip: [00:05:10] A helmet like this could help me to believe I’m in any number of three dimensional worlds by putting me right in the middle of all sorts of interactive, computer generated adventures. Since these scenes don’t really exist, programmers around the world experimenting with this concept call it virtual reality.

Annalee: [00:05:30] Basically their idea, and I think this was very popular in the early ‘90s was that VR would be like going inside a movie and you would get to be in it and you would feel all of the bumps and you would smell things and you would feel like you were a character in a film. And there’s really nothing like that with virtual reality now. Like you, I’ve done some virtual reality games and some “experiences” in virtual reality—

Charlie Jane: [00:06:01] Oh yeah.

Annalee: [00:06:01] And they can be really intense and immersive and they’re definitely amazing. It’s a lot better than what it looks like in Lawnmower Man, that’s for sure. But at the same time, there’s not ever as sense of feeling like I’ve completely left my living room. I think the one time I would make an exception to that is I went to the Ghostbusters Virtual Reality Experience in New York City several years ago where you put on a VR rig and then you walk through a space that has a bunch of stuff in it, where it blows wind on you when you’re walking outside and so, there’s actually one scene. Most of it is quite silly, but there’s one scene where you… the world is ending and you walk outside of an apartment building on the 100th floor, and you’re looking down at New York City and you’re on this narrow railing. And they blow air at you so you feel like air is rushing up at you from the street. And it’s pretty… it felt really intense. I felt like I was balanced on a railing, so that was really fun.

[00:07:13] But I think other than that, usually, other than occasionally feeling nauseous, I haven’t really had that total immersion experience. And you and I have been watching a new series called Upload—

Charlie Jane: [00:07:28] Right.

Annalee: [00:07:28] And I feel like that show is kind of dealing with exactly what we’re describing. That kind of VR disappointment. That sense that VR is not quite as R as we hoped it would be. Or maybe not as V, or something. I don’t know.

[00:07:44] So the premise of Upload is that when people are about to die they can choose to have their mind uploaded into a virtual world and where you go depends on how much money you can pay. And our main character, because he’s dating a really rich person manages to get uploaded to this very fancy afterlife. And yet, his afterlife isn’t really that great. There’s a lot of in-app purchases. There’s lots of things that are glitchy. You can see that people are putting a lot of load on the system because they won’t be able to walk as fast as they want to. And they have a handler who is helping him adjust and she gives this great speech.

Upload clip: [00:08:27] Not yet, but I’d like to. Okay, I get it. You know, this isn’t perfect and maybe you were led to believe it would be since the marketing mentions heaven-like a dozen times. But it’s kind of better, isn’t it? I mean, maybe the imperfections make it more like life because life isn’t perfect. But life is the most magical gift there is and if there’s God, he’s amazing, because he gave us life and the gratitude and creativity to keep it going as long as we possibly can.

Charlie Jane: [00:09:05] I love that speech so much.

Annalee: [00:09:07] Yeah, and I feel like it’s part of a new wave of virtual reality stories and I would count the miniseries DEVS in that as well, that are acknowledging the limitations of virtual reality and looking at it as a kind of flawed system. A system in which people maybe deliberately lie to themselves in the case of the show, DEVS. Or that they just have to kind of live with a lot of the same flaws and problems that they did in real reality.

Charlie Jane: [00:09:43] Yeah, and it’s interesting because novels have kind of dealt with those glitches and flaws for a long time, like the novel Everyone In Silico by Jim Munroe has a lot of stuff about that. Postsingular by Rudy Rucker has a lot of stuff about glitchy VR and what happens when you can’t render a million trees, you just have the same tree over and over again. Or everything is kind of crappy.

[00:10:04] What’s interesting to me about how we imagine VR in science fiction now is that I feel like classic science fiction about VR is often about leaving your body behind. If you think about Tron. In Tron the guy gets zapped by this weird laser and then he’s… it’s not that he’s wearing a VR suit, it’s that his mind is zapped inside the VR and he has a body that’s created for him. But it’s not… there’s no physical body of his that’s waiting out in the real world. And there’s other VR from the ‘80s-ish, where people have something plugged into their brain directly, so that all the sensory—and this is true in The Matrix, too, plugs into your brain so all your sensory input is coming directly from VR right into your brain. And there’s nothing in between. You don’t have to go through your eyes and ears and all that crap.

[00:10:50] Versus the idea of VR where you are wearing a suit. And you have a helmet and maybe you’re wearing a full-body suit, but it’s much more like, you are still in your body and you are experiencing VR through your physical senses, I guess.

Annalee: [00:11:05] Yeah, I think that’s a really important distinction and one of the ways that the show Upload is really great is that we actually see this moment where the main character’s girlfriend who’s still in real reality is going to hook up with him for a special VR sex date, and she has to go shopping for a rental suit for her sexual experience. And it’s portrayed as really kind of depressing and dingy and gross. The suits have to be rinsed out afterward—

Charlie Jane: [00:11:36] Oh man.

Annalee: [00:11:36] And we hear the salesperson saying, like, oh yeah, these suits can stand up to anything even when grandparents are hanging out with their kids and they throw up on the suit, it’s all fine. And she just kind of flees from the shop because the reality of virtual reality is just too gross to really enjoy. And so, I think that this is part of a new wave of realism in our virtual reality fantasies where we remember that our body isn’t going to disappear when we go in and that’s one of the great details in Jim Monroe’s novel, Everyone In Silico. People who are rich, their bodies—while they’re in VR, their body is in this really nice spa and the body is given facials and works out, goes on a treadmill every day. So you can lose weight while you’re in VR because your physical body is being kept up. But people who are poor, their body is getting bed sores and nobody is taking care of their body and so it’s kind of neglected. And so it’s this reminder, I think, that we do have… there’s always going to be a physical component to virtual reality unless we have these pure uploads. But even if we have uploads, there’s going to be these downsides where if you go to breakfast and if you get there after 10 all of the food on your plate vanishes because breakfast is over at 10, which is one of the gags in Upload.

[00:13:08] So do you think we’re getting closer in our science fiction to approximating the reality of this technology or are we still pretty far away from really grappling with what it’s actually like?

Charlie Jane: [00:13:19] I mean, I think it really varies. I think things like Upload are really trying to show VR in a more kind of nuanced way and dealing with the practical issues. Then you have things like the most recent season of Supergirl which was all about virtual reality and it was like these magic contact lenses that somehow you put in these contact lenses and you can taste food and you can smell things because that’s how contact lenses work.

Annalee: [00:13:41] I mean, obviously.

Charlie Jane: [00:13:42] Yeah, and it just like… it’s hand-wavey. It hacks into your brain somehow and so you get all of the sensory input. But it doesn’t really make a lot of sense and it’s just… it was this very kind of convoluted metaphor for VR as escape and as addiction and all this other stuff. Baking up slightly. When people depict VR in science fiction, you have people occasionally trying to engage with what it would really be like if you could have truly immersive VR, trying to create that in a holistically realistic way. But then you also have a lot of science fiction which is just like, let’s use this thing as a metaphor for gaming, let’s use it as a metaphor for people wanting to escape reality in other ways. For drugs, for like… it’s like anything else. It can be a thing that you engage with seriously, or it can just be like, a thing that’s like a metaphor for real world problems.

Annalee: [00:14:30] That’s so true. I was thinking about Iain M. Banks’ novel, Surface Detail, which is about virtual heaven and people are sent to heaven after they die and much like in Upload where they refer to the VR world sometimes as heaven, and the virtual world is owned by a very conservative right-wing government which views things like homosexuality as sins, lots of other stuff is depicted as sinful. And so people who are punished by the state for being sinners or for being subversives, are sent to hell. And they are tortured forever because of this… because of whatever infraction they’ve done. And so, again, it’s not a necessarily realistic depiction of VR, it’s more thinking about virtual reality as a metaphor for religion and how religion can make us feel like we’re in hell even when all we’ve done is kissed a girl or whatever.

[00:15:34] I think now, I would say that at least we have a subgenre of science fiction that is trying to tackle virtual reality as a technology as opposed to as a metaphor and I think that’s a big difference that we’re seeing over the past 10 years is that suddenly, because the technology is all around us and we’re all sampling it, more or less, we’re starting to get a sense of the fact that this actually can’t be a metaphor for everything anymore, because it isn’t really what we thought it would be. It’s actually a lot more glitchy and a lot more like real life than we had hoped it would be.

Charlie Jane: [00:16:16] Right, in addition to wanting VR to be a metaphor, we also want VR to be sort of this fantasy of getting—you can be anyone, you can be anything. There was that show Virtuality where they’re on a space ship but they can have virtual reality adventures and escape from the confines of the ship by going off and doing things.

[00:16:35] And one of the biggest fantasies about VR, of course, is VR sex and the movie Lawnmower Man has all that crazy face-melting sex stuff in it.

Annalee: [00:16:45] Yes, where their minds merge with each other.

Charlie Jane: [00:16:48] Oh my God. It’s so insane. And I feel like as with any technology, the moment the technology exists, you immediately want to think about how it can be used for sex. And Annalee, what did we learn from seeing all these weird VR sex scenes in movies and TV and everything else?

Annalee: [00:17:04] I’ve been reading about VR sex for a long time, Cecelia Tan has a great novel called The Velderet that came out in the late ‘90s, which is a… it’s just erotica, kind of. It’s not even erotica. It’s a science fiction novel with a lot of erotica in it and it’s about two people who meet in VR and they live on this planet that’s really oppressive and so the only way they can have the sex they want to have is if they meet secretly in VR and do it. And there’s a whole amazing plot that unfolds that I won’t give away. But you should definitely check out The Velderet, we’ll put a link in our show notes.

[00:17:38] What we see over and over again in VR sex is this idea that we will leave our bodies, kind of circling back to what you were saying earlier. And that we won’t be limited by our bodies anymore. Our bodies can merge with other bodies. We can turn into trucks or dinosaurs or…

Charlie Jane: [00:17:56] Transformer sex!

Annalee: [00:17:57] Transformer sex. You can be older than you are, younger than you are. Have body parts that you always wanted to have and that the sex will be simultaneously more intimate, because like I said, there’s this whole subgenre of VR sex being all about mind-melding, kind of, where people’s thoughts kind of intermingle. And then there’s the other side of it which is that I’ll be just like pure physicality. You’ll be able to experience any physical sensation and have any body that you want. Any body like, actual body but also any body like another person. And that there won’t be any rules anymore and that it’ll just be like pure carnal carnality. I don’t know how to say it.

Charlie Jane: [00:18:45] It’ll be guilt-free. It’ll be danger-free. It’ll be just free of all of the stuff that sex is loaded with in the real world. And it’ll just be a chance to kind of escape into a very pure fantasy. And I feel like we know enough about VR and enough about people now to know that it’s never going to be like that and even if we perfect all of the interfaces and you can just plug something directly into your brain and get whatever sensory inputs you want, it’s never going to be perfect because we’re dealing with humans, basically.

Annalee: [00:19:18] We’re dealing with humans and we’re dealing with software created by humans. There’s going to be glitches. Ther’es going to be griefers. There’s going to be connections that are really bad, so you’ll be having sex with someone and they’ll keep disappearing and reappearing or part of their leg will fall off and then reappear on their head or whatever. In a nonconsensual way, not like a some kind of consensual leg moving sex thing.

[00:19:47] So I do think it’s interesting though that a lot of times in science fiction even kind of more realistic science fiction about VR that VR sex is either portrayed as the most depraved, terrible sad thing, or the most liberatory and glorious and ecstatic thing that you can do. But it’s never in between. It’s never kind of like, oh, we just kind of had average VR sex. Or we had meat and potatoes sex. However you define that. That sounded kind of weird but you know what I mean. 

Charlie Jane: [00:20:26] Oh my God.

Annalee: [00:20:26] And so…

Charlie Jane: [00:20:28] I want only vegan VR sex. Hello. Vegan VR sex. Thank you very much.

Annalee: [00:20:32] Right?

Charlie Jane: [00:20:32] Needs to be completely vegan and organic and…

Annalee: [00:20:37] I think it could be, right?

Charlie Jane: [00:20:39] Cruelty free.

Annalee: [00:20:40] Yeah, you could be an organic chicken having sex with a free range bunny, whatever you want. No animals will be harmed in your VR sex. But anyway. To give us a better sense of what VR sex is really like in the real world, when we come back, we’re going to talk to Fivestar who has made lots of VR porn.

[00:21:06] Segment change music plays. Drums with a bass line including bass drops.

Annalee: [00:21:18] All right, so we have a very special guest, Fivestar, who’s going to talk to us about a very important part of virtual reality in reality, which is VR porn.

Charlie Jane: [00:21:30] Yeah!

Annalee: [00:21:31] Fivestar, why don’t you introduce yourself and tell us what you do?

Fivestar: [00:21:34] Well, my name is Fivestar, I’m an adult film director and I produce all kinds of BDSM porn and I also produce virtual reality BDSM porn.

Annalee: [00:21:45] Excellent. And tell us a little bit about what kind of a rig you use to make VR porn? Like what… are we talking about a giant camera, what does it look like and what are you working with in the studio when you’re trying to film people in VR?

Fivestar: [00:22:03] So, I think for adult VR, there’s a couple of ways you can go. You can go with CGI, which, I think that’s starting to pick up right now. And it doesn’t look realistic. You know, it looks like cartoon characters.

Charlie Jane: [00:22:17] Huh.

Annalee: [00:22:17] How does CGI work, does that mean you’re filming but you’re using a filter, or…

Fivestar: [00:22:22] That’s like, computer generated images like you might see in an animated film, but—

Charlie Jane: [00:22:27] So it’s literally just animation, right?

Fivestar: [00:22:31] Well, it’s animation and then on top of that it’s put inside of a gaming engine so that you can interact with it. Kind of the most VR porn that’s happening right now is live action, and it’s basically 3D video.

Annalee: [00:22:43] And so what is that like when you’re filming in 3D video, does that mean that the people who are involved in the scene are wearing rigs on their heads or are you filming it and then it gets reconstructed into 3D? How does that work?

Fivestar: [00:22:58] So there’s a couple ways you can do it. We use two cameras, one for each eye. The left eye and the right eye, and so that creates the 3D effect. And it usually goes in front of somebody’s head if it’s a POV shoot that we’re doing. So it’ll be right in front of their face. And it often requires people to be in weird positions that they wouldn’t usually be in when they’re trying to have intimate moments with people. And—

Annalee: [00:23:23] So is the camera strapped to their face or are you actually holding a camera in front of their face while they’re trying to have sex?

Fivestar: [00:23:31] You know, we use grip and I use speed rail to build a rig so that it kind of… we can put the camera in front of their face and it’s not necessarily attached to their body. Some people do attach it to their body but that can get really disorienting if you’re actually watching the footage later because it’s kind of shaky. And the cool thing about the VR headsets now is that basically it’s—the image is mapped 360, or often 180 is the industry standard right now. And you can look around. So you can move your head and you can see what’s going on in the scene. So we don’t actually need to put it on somebody’s head, it’s better to start with a stationary picture.

Annalee: [00:24:09] The thing about virtual reality is that, like you said, you can kind of… I as the viewer can look around but I can only look around at what the camera has filmed. So it sounds like what you’re saying is that you’d have two people or however many people performing and then you’d have a camera that’s watching them that isn’t from their perspective, but it’s just sort of next to them and then it’s filming in 180 or 360.

Fivestar: [00:24:38] Well, that’s definitely one thing you can do. Maybe I can explain a scene. There’s—

Annalee: [00:24:42] Yeah, explain a scene, like give us a picture.

Fivestar: [00:24:45] So KinkVR is something that I produce for and we do a number of different genres but something that’s really popular in VR is male POV. So cis male POV. So the guy’s sitting down and usually in a reclined position to make it easier to film his body. So when you’re watching the movie, you are supposed to be him. You feel like you’re him. The camera’s right in front of his face. Oftentimes his head is even tilted backwards so he can’t even see it. So it’s pretty convincing. It’s really compelling. You actually… I think you actually feel like you’re the person. I think some people are a little more susceptible to that than others. But the first time I tried it, I felt like I was that person.

[00:25:26] Then there’s action happening to you because we’re doing BDSM and we might do it from a male dom perspective. We’ve kind of broken some of the VR porn rules and had the guy move a little bit. It seems like some fans don’t want the guy to move because they’re not actually making the movements happen but because we’re trying a different genre, that’s what’s happening. So that’s the POV shot. 

[00:25:50] And then we also do voyeur shots as well and that’s not as popular right now in VR porn, but there’s a couple people doing it. And you don’t have a body when you’re watching. It’s like…

Charlie Jane: [00:26:01] You’re a ghost.

Annalee: [00:26:03] You’re the voyeur, right? Like, you’re watching.

Fivestar: [00:26:04] You’re the voyeur.

Annalee: [00:26:06] Yeah.

Fivestar: [00:26:06] And the action is being played to you and I think that’s part of the magic of VR porn. It just feels very intimate. People are getting up in your face into the camera, but you don’t have to necessarily identify with a body. I think it still feels compelling and in a way, I think it’s more universal because you don’t have to match up, convince yourself that the body in the frame is you.

Annalee: [00:26:32] Yeah, because I watched a VR porn scene where it was a POV scene and so I looked down at myself, and I was like, oh, I’m a dude in a white t-shirt and it was very disorienting. I mean, it did feel like it was me and that was what was so weird was, I was like, huh. All right. I have this weird… I’m a headless guy. Because if I look really closely at my neck it’s just black. So there’s this sort of weird spot where my head is supposed to be. But yeah, you look down and it’s like, I have all the parts that I would expect a cis male to have. And it was strange. It definitely felt very different than watching from a voyeur perspective.

Fivestar: [00:27:19] Yeah, and I think that happens because we’re kind of playing towards the audience and the people who are actually paying for us to make this happen. And it tends to be a more cis male audience.

Annalee: [00:27:29] And so, that’s more popular, is feeling like you’re inside the scene as opposed to watching the scene?

Fivestar: [00:27:35] I think so. It’s hard for me to say for sure. Based off of comments and talking to fans, the POV is very popular. But there’s a lot of things you can’t get in POV and oftentimes there’s only certain positions that work and not everybody wants to only do reverse cowgirl and cowgirl. And those are like the most popular…

Charlie Jane: [00:27:56] That’s a lot of cowgirl.

Annalee: [00:27:57] I was going to ask you, it’s all cowgirl all the time… I was going to ask, how is it for the actors and the performers? If they’re trying to do something that’s already pretty acrobatic, and then you’re saying, all right, hold your head totally still, keep it at this angle. Does it make it more challenging to do those kinds of scenes?

Fivestar: [00:28:16] You know, I have to say, it’s one of the most challenging things to ask people to do. And we do some pretty extreme stuff at Kink.com. I hang people from their ankles, like from the ceiling by their ankles, and this is definitely harder, I would have to say. There’s less intimacy with your partner. The scene itself in the end might seem more intimate but with a camera in front of your face, there’s something in between you and your partner and so a lot of people have a hard time performing. Especially… male performers are expected to keep an erection, and I have to say, I think that the eye contact is something that really helps people with that.

Annalee: [00:28:54] Yeah.

Charlie Jane: [00:28:54] Whoa, that’s interesting. So my question was, what’s the most surprising thing about filming in VR, either logistically or just in terms of how it feels. What’s the thing you didn’t expect to be an issue or to be… what’s the most surprising part of it?

Fivestar: [00:29:08] So the thing that surprises me now is that we’re using basically the same methods of shooting VR porn as we did when this first started getting, I think it was around 2015, when this first started getting popular. And there’s not been very much innovation. I was hoping by now we would have cameras that actually, you just press record and you go, kind of like our other cameras. I mean, you know, settings and all of that, of course. But it’s all jury-rigged together, still. And I think that has to do with it not really taking off in the mainstream. So that’s actually what I’m surprised about. How much we have to jury-rig things and put things together with kind of tape and bubble gum to make it happen.

Annalee: [00:29:56] That’s really interesting. So one of the things we were talking about earlier in the episode was how there’s all these fantasies about what sex is going to be like in VR and how it’s going to be this amazing experience where we kind of leave our bodies and we can float and merge with each other and turn into dinosaurs and whatever we want to do. And I wonder how you think that stacks up with what people can really do in VR porn? When you think about a near future for VR porn, say you actually got a plug and play VR camera where it was essentially like the cameras you use for 2D. Do you think people would be able to have these kinds of fantastical experiences, or what do you think it would be like in reality?

Fivestar: [00:30:42] I think we’ve barely scratched the surface of what VR porn can be. So the level of interactivity is pretty limited at the moment. There is some development in volumetric video where instead of—right now we’re sort of shooting from the inside out, it shoots the subject from the outside in. And so you can actually walk… you can walk around the subject and what’s happening and you can kind of look and see. You can crawl underneath their legs and see what’s happening down there.

Annalee: [00:31:12] So you can’t do that now, but you would be able to do that in the future?

Fivestar: [00:31:14] You know what, you can do that now, it just looks really bad. So, we’ve had people pitch us like, hey buy our technology, it’s only like half a million dollars and it looks really bad. And…

Annalee: [00:31:29] That’s such a deal!

Fivestar: [00:31:30] It’s kind of creepy, you know? It’s like oh, she looks like a zombie but she’s not supposed to actually be a zombie, she’s supposed to be a sexy girl in a club because there’s holes all through her body. Um.

Charlie Jane: [00:31:43] Oh.

Annalee: [00:31:44] Oh, because the rendering gives her holes.

Fivestar: [00:31:46] Yeah, or the cameras are not able to capture her armpits because it’s too hard to shoot an armpit or a crotch or something like that because there’s too many crevasses. So I think the level of interactivity, that… when that technology gets better, because we know they’re working on it. It’s going to get better. We have at least 10 years until we can do something like that. As technology gets better, it’s going to become more realistic. So that’s why we’re really leaning heavily on cinematic VR because it’s just more compelling than any of the 3D rendered stuff that’s coming out right now.

[00:32:24] So unfortunately, the fantastical stuff that you’re talking about is… I think, some people can get lost in it and sometimes there’s a suspension of disbelief but there’s not enough to convince the majority of people that that’s what’s going on.

[00:32:43] So it’s just, we’re not there yet. There are… people are working in haptics and teledildonics and stroking machines to kind of go along with the videos that you’re watching, and I think that is contributing to the experience. And you know, we’re slowly getting there, but we’re way off, unfortunately.

Charlie Jane: [00:33:03] Can you explain the difference between cinematic VR and 3D VR?

Fivestar: [00:33:07] Cinematic VR can be 3D, or it can be 2D. So it just means that you’re shooting from a different perspective, like the right eye and the left eye.

Charlie Jane: [00:33:19] Oh, I see. Okay.

Fivestar: [00:33:19] And that’s 3D. CGI is, I guess I was kind of using… I guess I should have said live action versus CGI is what it [Crosstalk: 00:33:28].

Charlie Jane: [00:33:28] Oh, okay. Cool.

Fivestar: [00:33:31] To clarify.

Annalee: [00:33:32] So I guess, I was curious, from your experiences making 3D video, making VR video, what seems to be the thing that works the best in terms of realizing a sex fantasy in VR? What is the most seamless and seems to make the audience feel like, oh, I actually had VR sex?

Fivestar: [00:33:56] I really think that the performance is everything and when the performer can look into your eyes and make you believe that you’re there, it’s successful. And you can have performers that come in, they kind of half-ass it and they’re not really looking into the camera correctly, and they’re not actually imagining another person behind the camera and it just doesn’t sell it as much. And so right now we’re really relying on the performance and what the performer can bring to the table. That’s what I think is the most convincing. Obviously, it helps to have as high resolution as you can get and that’s one thing that’s improved in the last few years. Also the audio makes a huge difference so kind of recording as if the microphones are two different ears. And so yes, the technical helps, but more than anything, it’s what the performers are bringing to the scene.

Annalee: [00:34:47] Yeah, making you feel like you’re there because of how the people are acting in the scene.

Fivestar: [00:34:53] Yes.

Annalee: [00:34:55] And then, it’s just cowgirl or reverse cowgirl and that’s it.

Fivestar: [00:35:00] Well, I mean. You know, people have experimented. People do. We do standing scenes and performers hate that because they have to lean back and stand and fuck at the same time. So those are positions that happen. There’s a lot of experimenting going on. Some people have tried moving the camera, but only slightly because you don’t want to make people sick when they’re trying to get off. There’s things that you can do that’s different and I have to say at KinkVR we do a lot of different things because our content is not focused on just penetration. That’s not the main goal of our content so we’re able to do a lot of cool stuff with bondage and suspension and where we’re swinging people closer to the camera and away from the camera and we’re using a lot of implements. So it doesn’t need to be connected to a body. And I think that the main challenge we have is that a penis, it is connected to the POV person. If it’s not connected then you can do a lot more with the camera.

[00:36:05] So you can push the boundaries but I do think a lot of mainstream porn just kind of has their go-to of a guy sitting on a couch.

Annalee: [00:36:13] That’s interesting. I love the idea that using tools makes it more freeing in a way, because it’s like, oh, well, we can do whatever we want.

Fivestar: [00:36:22] Yeah, we’ve done fucking machines, which is way easier than a person.

Charlie Jane: [00:36:26] Huh.

Fivestar: [00:36:26] Fucking machines, dick on a stick.

Annalee: [00:36:33] Dick on a stick, that’s awesome.

Fivestar: [00:36:33] Yes.

Annalee: [00:36:34] That’s like, I think that’s the future. Or maybe that’s the past. I just think about in CGI movies where people are always acting opposite like a foam ball on a stick or whatever. It’s the same idea.

Fivestar: [00:36:49] People are starting to think outside of the box more and in fact, I think a lot of solo VR stuff is really taking off right now, as well. So, and kind of mixing in different mediums like ASMR with VR, people have been kind of experimenting with that lately, and that’s pretty cool.

Annalee: [00:37:08] Well, to finish up, why don’t you tell us about your favorite VR video that you’ve done, and what made it really cool.

Fivestar: [00:37:16] Ooh, that’s hard. I have to say, for me, I really focus on the performances, so I’m going to pick out one that the performers did an excellent job. We did an interrogation scene with two performers, Leigh Raven and Charlotte Sartre and they were incredible. The guys were Derrick Pierce and [Hellfer Sloots? 00:37:38] and they were awesome. They were, they acted like they actually were crooked cops trying to interrogate—

Charlie Jane: [00:37:48] Oh, nice.

Fivestar: [00:37:48] These women, and the acting was so good, it really takes you. It helps get you into the scenario and since we’re doing BDSM, we had some of the toughest performers on set that day and they really took it and the doms took them there. So for me, I have to say the performance is almost everything and the technology is secondary because if you don’t have the performance and you have great technology, you’re just not going to be convinced. Yeah.

Annalee: [00:38:19] Can I ask you a technical question, though, about the interrogation scene? So where is my point of view as the audience when I’m watching a VR scene of interrogation?

Fivestar: [00:38:29] We’ve done it both ways. The scene I’m talking, in that scene we had the main interrogator and their co-cop were characters you were in the position of the secondary interrogator. So the secondary interrogator doesn’t say anything but the first interrogator is like shoving the girls into the camera and asking them questions and saying, “Look into my partner’s eyes and tell him what a dirty slut you are!” Something like that, you know.

Charlie Jane: [00:39:05] Ooooh, interesting.

Annalee: [00:39:06] So you get to be like, the good cop in that scene.

Fivestar: [00:39:10] Yeah, there you go. Good cop, bad cop. And so it actually, for KinkVR, and I haven’t seen really anyone do something like this, we’ve been doing four person scenes. And there’s a lot of one on one scenes out there but… so it’s really difficult to do scenes where there’s a male dominant but he has to sit behind the camera rig and not move very much. So we bring in a second male dominant and he kind of, we call him the handler. He really drives home that dynamic. And then the two ladies kind of take turns being the sub. And we usually bring them in for the day and the guys take turns and we do a couple of scenes that way and that’s really the only way we can get across that dynamic. If not, like, the guy would be stuck in a position which works really well for femdom, because just tie him up and he just stays in that position and the woman does all the work in front of him. I don’t know if that made any sense.

Annalee: [00:40:09] That did makes sense. That was super interesting. So I wanted to just ask you one more question to finish up, which is, is there anything that you’ve scene in representations of virtual reality in movies or TV that you wish people would stop getting wrong? Is there just one thing about VR where you’re just like, noooooo! Stop saying that! Stop making it look like that!

Fivestar: [00:40:35] You know? I don’t get those feelings because I feel like a lot of the depictions of VR are very futuristic. It’s like, 50 years in the future or something like that and I hope, I hope that’s magical and I hope you do have a psychic connection with someone in the future. I think that that would be cool. I mean, maybe a little bit creepy, but. I think that would be cool. So I don’t…

Annalee: [00:40:59] Depending on the scene.

Fivestar: [00:41:01] Exactly. So I think that, yeah, they’re a little more fantastical representations, but I think that’s kind of fun, and it’s something to maybe strive for.

Annalee: [00:41:12] Awesome. And I just wanted to note that all of the scenes that Fivestar are describing are all things that were done before the quarantine and now that we’re in quarantine, she’s making awesome PSAs about how to stay six feet away because your dom told you to do it. We’ll put a link to that in the notes. Okay, so Fivestar, where can people find you on the internet? Where can they find your work?

Fivestar: [00:41:35] Well, you can find my VR work on KinkVR.com and you can find me on Twitter at @iamfivestar.

Annalee: [00:41:41] And what about your company?

Fivestar: [00:41:43] I have a small video production company with my partner Sadie Lola and it’s called Filth Syndicate and you can find our latest project on FilthyFemdom.com.

Annalee: [00:41:54] Awesome. So thank you so much for coming in and—

Charlie Jane: [00:41:58] Yeah, thank you!

Annalee: [00:41:58] —and tell us all about the latest VR porn stuff. That’s really awesome.

[00:42:02] Segment change music plays. Drums with a bass line including bass drops.

Annalee: [00:42:09] You’ve been listening to Our Opinions Are Correct. Thank you so much for listening. If you’d like to support us, we have a Patreon. You can go to Patreon.com/OurOpinionsAreCorrect. We have lots of audio extras and essays and extra thoughts and excerpts from our books that you can read there. Unpublished excerpts so it’s like super [leet oday warez? 00:42:31]. And if you’d like to see us on Twitter, we’re at @ooacpod and you can find this podcast where find podcasts are purveyed. Please do leave a review for us on Apple Podcasts because it helps people find us.

[00:42:46] And thank you so much to our producer, Veronica Simonetti at Women’s Audio Mission. Thank you to Chris Palmer for the music and we will talk to you in a couple weeks!

[00:42:59] Bye!

Charlie Jane: [00:43:00] Bye!

[00:43:01] Outro music plays. Drums with a bass line including bass drops.