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SchnuppiLilac I think the element of intimacy in western VR was there back in the earlier days and was lost over time (not sure if deliberately or whether the guys who could film it in this way moved on).
I agree. Earlier iterations of VR porn were much more focused on the intimacy and experience the medium could provide - they just lacked better cameras that we have now. I think the earlier days of VR were more of a purist or connoisseur mindset as well, since it was a smaller community and many people were still priced out of the headsets. I think a couple of things changed that: cheap headsets, which left studios at the mercy of the masses, and the migration of traditional pornographers to the medium once the proof of concept was established. SLR, in may ways, is the worst of this trend. They are constantly talking about how they are "innovating" in that "move fast and break shit" way that techies from the the early 2000s did (and we all know how well that worked out). But instead of elevating Virtual Reality to become more immersive, have more presence, have more intimacy - the very thing that made it amazing in the first place - they just keep dragging it towards 3D porn with shit that has nothing to do with virtual reality (e.g., shorts, PMVs, passthrough, music tracks, non-pov, harems, booking every rando with no acting skills, porny dialogue, flat-porn angles that break immersion or little attention to angles at all).
It's a shame, really. Once a company decides they want to dominate the market (SLR) instead of producing artisan porn (CzechVR, VREdging, DeepInSex), they have to dumb their product down to cater to everyone. Before you know it, you're Walmart.