This is kind of a weird post -- almost like a school report, I think. But I bought a VR headset that was on sale for Black Friday, and I wanted to share my experience. The TL;DR is that on one hand, I totally get why so many people are enthusiastic about the tech and why it seems so powerful and maybe even inevitable. But on the other hand, I can see lots of reasons why it's not catching on.

First, I got an Oculus Go headset. They're usually $200, but mine was on sale for $150. The Go is a standalone headset -- you don't have to plug it into a computer in order to use it. But it has less power than some others.

There are three things that make VR really interesting. First, it's immersive. When you watch a regular movie or video there's always a frame. With VR, there's no frame everything you can see is part of it. You're inside of it, and there's nothing outside. Second, it's stereoscopic. So it's kind of like a 3D movie, or, if you're older like me, like an old View Master. And third, the headset tracks the movement of your head. This means that if I turn my head left, the scene changes as if I were in a room and turned my head left. If I tilt my head up or down, it's like I was in a room, moving my head, and my field of vision was changing accordingly. This part of it is very smooth and works very well.

What all of this amounts to, in the context of fetish clips, is a very strong illusion of "presence". It's possible for it to feel as if performer in a clip is standing right in front of you -- as if her face were only a few inches from yours, and that you're looking her right in the eye. I have a glove fetish, and I have a couple of clips where a woman wearing gloves holds them right in front of the camera -- it really seems as if a 3D gloved hand is right in front of my face. It's kind of incredible.

That's the good part. Now here's the bad part.

First, femdom is a niche, and VR is another nice, and there really isn't that much out there. I tend to like offbeat stuff, and so while there are big femdom companies that are doing VR clips, they tend to be the kinds of clips that aren't that interesting for me.

Second, making this stuff work is still challenging. I bought a membershp to hologirlsvr.com. They have a really small femdom section. But you can download the clips in several formats. The one that I assumed would work with my headset didn't -- I had to try a different one. In some clips the stereo seems too strong, in other cilps it seems too weak. It kind of seems like it's hard for people to make these clips, that they're still figuring it out.

But then if you think about it from the clip producer's point of view, it doesn't make a lot of sense. The market for VR clips is smaller than the market for regular clips, and making the clips is probably way harder. I looked at cameras online, and good ones seem really expensive. Somehow you have to keep track of all of the different kinds of headsets out there, and make sure you have versions of your clips that will work with all of them. So it just sort of seems like it doesn't make a lot of sense from a business POV.

Finally, it's probably going to be awhile until these headsets have really good resolution. It's not just a situation where they display the two scenes each eye. They're taking two input frames, doing a bunch of calculations based on the position of your head, and then rendering two different output frames that show the scene from the right perspective. It's just hard to do that in an affordable device in a way that seems realistic. So with my headset you can see the pixels, which makes the clips look sort of weirdly tacky in a way that's hard to describe. I assume the more expensive headsets are better, but I don't know.

So it's this weird situation where you try this, and you think, "Oh my god, this is the best thing I've ever seen, I want everything to be in VR from now on." But then when you really think about it, you reallize that it's probalby not going to take over the world any time soon.

The stuff I'd really like to see would be classic fetish clips that take advantage of those illusions of presence and nearness. I mean, heels, stockings, boots, gloves. Not scenes with women dominating men while they wear that stuff, just the woman wearing it. Stuff more like Elember Batters used to do, only in VR.

I just wish it existed. But the market for that sort of thing would be so small I doubt it will ever be made, it would be a giant money loser.

I was looking at cameras, and the best one seems to cost something like $14k, although I think you can use cheaper ones. Beyond that, I don't know how to make films, take good pictures, make VR films, etc. And I'm really too uptight sexually to work with adult performers, who in my experience are wary of guys who have hangups like mine. So I don't think I'll be the guy who makes that happen.

Anyway, that's my school report on VR.

CES is going to be interesting this year. Years ago, the adult film expo was concurrent with CES and there was always a porn corner of the show. They split apart and that was the end of porn at CES for a while. CES saw the light and the application for VR and this year they're trying an "adult" section.

Last year there was one company who was showing off their VR porn movies. I spent about a minute in there and, with goggles on, watched a couple fucking. Big deal! It reminded me of my first peep show films. But I guess you gotta start somewhere.

Most VR demos have too much motion and I get seasick from watching more than a few minutes. I'm not impressed with the concept and the implementation, but it's going to be novel for some and if there's a market, there will be content.

I'm waiting for the Star Wars version of VR.

It's likely that you just don't enjoy VR clips, but it could be possible that the clip you saw wasn't well done or to your taste.

I think they work for me for a couple of reasons. First, I like POV clips in general -- the format is good for that. In particular, the camera usually doesn't move in a POV clip.

The other thing is that I don't experience a lot of real world intimacy. VR clips are good at creating the illusion of physical presence, and clip producers who have gotten good at the medium have learned to lean into that aspect of it pretty hard. It's common in these clips for the performer to come up very close to the camera, and when she does it almost feels like her face is inches from yours.

If you experience a lot of real world intimacy it probably wouldn't seem so remarkable. And the artificiality of it would probably make it seem less interesting. But for someone like me it's very powerful.

There's another thing about it that I didn't realize until I was thinking about my reply to your post.

When I was younger, I couldn't find femdom porn easily. BDSM porn was illegal in my state, and Variations magazine was about the best I could do. I'd wait a month for the next issue, and there might be two or three femdom letters in it.

So every few months I would drive something like 500 miles to another state, so that I could visit a porn store and buy femdom magazines.

Porn used to be scarce, but now it's as if porn is everywhere. It's on our computers, on our phones, etc. Not only is porn not scarce, we're sort of saturated by it.

But VR femdom clips are scarce. I got the headset, I saw some good clips, and I wanted more. But it just isn't there. It's weird to be back in a world where porn is scarce.

I know this isn't what you meant, but I think they have games:

https://www.oculus.com/vader-immortal/?locale=en_US

Both, actually.

My (only) thing is spanking, and I suppose that a VR production that allowed me to walk around the scene could be interesting. Honestly, though, I've pretty much lost interest in spanking videos that are coming out these days. I'd rather spend my money on the real thing.

Porn was actually part of CES, behind a curtain no less, in the early and mid-1980s, then it was kicked out of the show. Then a decade ago the adult film expo held its show at the Sands during CES which created quite a stir among the CES community because it had exhibits at the Sands too. The adult film expo is no longer held during CES.

My point is that VR fans don't despair. The category that drove VCRs through the roof in the late '70s and early '80s (besides lower prices) was porn, "adult movies." To get VR going, along with lower prices, there will be porn, plenty of it, which will mean there will be fetish clips too, so don't despair.

You might be right -- it's definitely possible.

But if I look at it from the producers' POV, I don't see the argument for making VR clips. It's harder and the market of people who want to buy the clips is a lot smaller.

But the Oculus Go, which is the headset I just bought, was a big seller at Amazon on Black Friday. It's cheap enough for people to take a chance.