I/O

Virtual Reality Is Still Failing Half of the World’s Population

A new adult VR experience is likely to make women sick, but not because of its content

Lux Alptraum
OneZero
Published in
7 min readOct 10, 2019

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A double exposure photograph of a woman wearing VR Glasses in two different poses.
Photo: tolgart/E+/Getty

“The guy isn’t getting naked quick enough.” These were the words of a woman I’d known for just a few minutes, a fellow member of the media who, like me, had travelled to a co-working space in New York’s Financial District to get a glimpse of a whole new take on porn.

Erika Lust, an award-winning pornographer known for her cinematic, female-friendly approach to smut, had finally made the leap into immersive, 360-degree virtual reality porn, and we were some of the first people to get a look at her debut effort.

As I strapped on a VR headset, I was transported to a warehouse, where a sex party was ramping up all around me. Depending on where I turned my head, I could see all manner of sexual enticements taking place. Directly in front of me, a woman was stripping. If I turned 180 degrees, a male performer did the same. In one corner, a threesome; in the next, a foursome. Some performers engaged in light BDSM, others kept things strictly vanilla. It felt as though I were enjoying a sex party as a disembodied voyeur — a significant departure from the typical VR porn experience, where users are placed into a…

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Lux Alptraum
OneZero

OneZero columnist, Peabody-nominated producer, and the author of Faking It: The Lies Women Tell About Sex — And the Truths They Reveal. http://luxalptraum.com