Why VR scenes are infrequent?

eyecandyboobs

What exactly is the steep added cost in VR production which makes the VR releases so infrequent compared to 2D studios like TeamSkeet?

Hairsational

There's presumably more work to set up the camera for each position and some scenes can be quite long (e.g. those by Alex Nash), which means longer days on set.

The pool of VR producers is also tiny. Some producers shoot for multiple sites.

The post-production processes take longer too.

I don't think there is a "steep" added cost though. Maybe double the cost at worst if I had to take a naive guess.

petergriff

Longer set up and shoot times.

In the time it takes to shoot one VR scene, you can likely knock out 3 or 4 regular ones. You can also shoot and edit flat porn on a phone at this point.

petermc

petergriff I’m sure I remember an interview with a pornstar who mentioned VR being much easier to work in. She was talking about the number of scenes and how long they take and specifically mentioned VR as being easy money and short, something you knock out in one afternoon. I can’t obviously verify that as I have zero experience in the industry though.

If you watch a lot of VR, there’s a definite effort made to move the camera rig as little as possible. Usually they’ll try to get missionary and doggy without the camera or the male talent moving, possibly even the blowjob too all in the same position. They’ll often bring in some cushions or weird contraption to make it work. They’ll similarly then get cowgirl, reverse cowgirl and the cumshot out of just one fixed position too. Basically then you can sometimes get away with shooting from two angles for the whole scene. It’s a huge bugbear of mine as it seems to be more about speed and convenience rather than what actually makes the best looking scene. There also isn’t usually a ton of cuts in the scenes, they’d rather mute the sound than stop the scene to give direction. Not saying that’s a good or bad thing by the way, just that these scenes aren’t as stop and start as 2d porn scenes.

In 2d porn (pro stuff like Brazzers/Wicked etc. not onlyfans) they shoot multiple camera angles for every position, they may shoot in multiple locations. I think a lot of those shoots run a lot longer than VR shoots do.

Vrsumo2017

petergriff I've mentioned this before but the phones should already shoot 180 video, eventually I think they will and it'll have the software to edit it too. 🤔

SchnuppiLilac

You can find numbers out there that the market share of VR porn is less than 5 % of the entire porn industry, so I would assume that flat porn studios with a high release rate have more subscribers. With a bigger budget and lower production costs, you can release more scenes per week.

SchnuppiLilac

petermc a pornstar who mentioned VR being much easier to work in

fuccaneer

Here's a different perspective: https://virtualrealityreporter.com/pornstars-feel-vr-porn/
At the very least, the studios appear to have higher labor costs because VR actors often get premium pay. Maybe that's the takeaway from your interview: she was good at VR so it was easy for her and she was getting paid extra money. Seems that may not necessarily be true across the board.

petermc

SchnuppiLilac You may be right, I was just going off one comment in an interview. I definitely get that they wouldn’t be fun to shoot though for the male or female talent. I also get that shooting long sections with no cuts would be physically demanding. It probably also depends on who you’re shooting for as to how long the shoot is.

thatoculusdude

SchnuppiLilac ☹️

InfiniteFun

...some of my favourite scenes are still from the early days, just because they're raw, unfiltered by years of industry vision about how VR should be shot. Much of what's on the table has become formulaic, as studios copy the 'winning' formula, which inevitably is always the lowest common denominator.

However, this is to be expected, watching porn in VR is a kink in itself, a fetish to some. As such it excludes many people who didn't care for that kink, lowering the pool of potential customers, producers, and combined with the cost of a specialized rig and the extra faff outlined above, somewhat stifling the 'amateur' market. Without people just randomly shooting stuff and throwing it up, this scene would just stagnate, rehashing current formats. As a rule, 90% of everything is crap, so this is to be expected.

But it's slowly changing. Costs will come down, rigs will get smaller and easier to use, post will be simplified by clever software, VR headsets will become more ubiquitous, and eventually random people will just start shooting random stuff cos... why not? And then loads more random people will start watching.

There's plenty of evidence for this at the moment, here on SLR. There are numerous studios shooting interesting fetish stuff (bless the Italians, and that lot from Berlin...x), jiggly oiled butts, strippers, lesbians, non POV, JOI's, the actual variety of the numerous different studios is very encouraging.

What i miss personally are the great big sumptuous SLRO productions from those OnTheTelly days, big complex shoots with lots of weird kink in them, shoot specifically with interactives in mind. Sheer class, some of the best stuff ever shot in VR. No doubt too big and too weird at the time, but a high water mark for the industry to aim for, and no doubt surpass in the future.

One good thing about only having 5% of the market share, is that there's a 95% untapped market. Even if only a few percent of people move to VR this year, a 10% share would mean a doubling of the revenue for VR. That should encourage new talent, with new creative ideas, to enter.

And then maybe we can finally have black people in VR...x

Hurto11

My guess is that it’s not as profitable for them to do more scenes. The demand just isn’t there. But this is partially their own fault (all vr studios), by being very predictable, copy cat, and not booking any big time Prime A level stars on any consistent basis. Talent matters. The excuse is the top stars are exclusive but there’s still a lot out there that aren’t or would be willing to negotiate. I truly believe if they booked top girls on a weekly constant basis they would literally double the profits. But when’s the last well known pornstar that has shot for any of these VR? Blake blossom? Angel youngs? Like that’s it and they aren’t really what I’d consider “top tier”.

OliverDK

Hurto11 Could be true but as an old timer I think the issue isn't down to a single issue. For example I also think that part of the issue is to be found in that VR is mostly vanilla pornstar sex.

There exist hundreds of popular niches and fetishes in the world and yet here a decade later VR is still mostly vanilla pornstar sex. I can't count the amount of old timers that supported VR in the beginning but grew frustrated with it over time till they eventually just left because VR never seemed to ingulf the niches they liked.

I'm not much different. I LOVE the concept of VR and I watch it weekly and keep up-to-date but most of my porn consumption these days is 'back to 2D'. Why? Well because the niches and kinks I have barely exist in VR. A glance through SLR's daily many updates - vanilla sex and solos with mostly the same types of models - almost exclusively and it never seem to change.

I don't really blame studios don't. I think the reality of porn is that free websites and piracy have hit porn hard so the willingness to take risks is close to zero. The earning potential that existed 20 years ago in studio porn sites/scenes simply isn't there anymore because of the mentioned issues. On top of that you have OnlyFans, ManyVids and similar sites to contest with. Both type of sites have likely driven up hiring costs or turned models towards their own productions and as such not even hirable.

Is there a solution? I don't know. I think long term AI, DeepFakes, etc. could kill the pornstar but short term I don't know.

Hurto11

I agree with most of that. I think the "niche" and "fetish" type stuff is isn't as common or mainstream as you might think/hope. The boring vanilla sex is stuff that's going to greater appeal to the masses and it's a way to try and get as many people into VR and to try it as possible. I think as costs get cheaper to film and produce VR, you will see people take more risks and go more niche, but right now the entire VR porn market just for normal vanilla porn isn't as big as it needs to be, so I just think it's very early. Even though it's been around now for 7-8 years...that's really NOTHING for a kind of technology like this. In another 5-10 years we're going to look back at Quest 3 and the scenes coming out now and think it's utter dogshit. I mean, look at how much better it is already from like 3-4 years ago. I have a lot of optimism about its' future and I think it will take time. It's not even close to mainstream yet either. Right now we're just "weirdo losers jerking off with scuba gear on". In 10 years everyone will be using this and no one will ever remember 2D porn even existed.

OliverDK

Hurto11 I think the "niche" and "fetish" type stuff is isn't as common or mainstream as you might think/hope.

Judging by the 'most search porn terms' that free websites releases yearly and sometimes monthly, they have been dominating top 5-10 for a decade more or less worldwide so its not really a matter of hope, it's a matter of statistic - at least in 2D land. I honestly doubt the VR audience is different in what they are interested in. It's of course true if VR mostly produce cookie cut vanilla pornstar sex, the majority of people that are into VR are into that as why would people that are into something else even look at VR.

In any case I don't disagree with you that top talent isn't also a factor - I've certainly seen a drop in interesting actresses in VR and a lot of no-names popping up on even the more established sites. But as I said earlier I believe the issue isn't down to one single issue, I think it's a broader and has to do with many issues.