n0den I don't think they test their PT videos
You would think they would, these vr cams can live stream to the headset, I'd love to be guy in the background giving the thumbs 
when the image looks on point.
How's look in there
It's good 
Passthrough videos are getting technically worse
Manny_S We never got that promised update and the quality is only getting worse it seems.
I feel like @Manny_S is one of us. I'm pretty sure he watched VR on a regular basis before starting to work for SLR.
So i seems like he knows what looks correct and what doesn't.
Maybe there are a lot of factors that we just don't know about. If he is on set helping with the directing then it must be harder than we can imagine.
Manny can you give us examples of what makes it so tricky that we don't understand?
- Edited
rerun119 Oh I don't doubt it's difficult. And pretty much nobody else is doing it, so nobody to learn from. But man it just feels frustrating for somebody like me who bought a lifetime here. One of the main reasons, probably THE main reason I was happy here lately was because of those awesome PT quality video's that Simsense made. Then he leaves to another site and is being replaced by someone who still has to learn it and is nowhere near that quality. Can't help but think, if they do that to the other succesful directors too, everybody with lifetime gets seriously screwed. Of course, such risks comes with buying lifetime, but man, still, it sucks ...
Of course I'm rooting now for @Manny_S to learn and improve but the conclusion that things have only gotten worse in those 4 months, isn't very promising. I mean, 4 months now of poorly short PT video's, no improvements, if anything, it even seems to be getting worse ... at what point should management conclude it's just not going to work?
harigeharry Total guess here but I wonder if Simsense was hired by SLR to make a few PT videos as exclusives, so made the investment in a proper greenscreen studio. However the contract allowed him to still create content for other studios (reasonable, given his equipment and studio outlay). Notice he often used the same models as the SLR shoots on VR Porn? So did he book them for the day with SLR's budget then squeeze in a second shoot and sell it to VR Porn? So essentially SLR's initial investment in the PT shoots and all the tech behind it, really the whole concept, just got handed to their main competitor using the same models. It's like when those factories in China fulfil orders for an exciting new product and then make an identical product which they sell themselves and put their original client out of business. I don't know if this is how it went down, but SLR lost the best guy in the business as well as the only American PT studio with access to American talent. I do wonder if anger prevailed over business sense here, or if I have the situation entirely wrong, but end of the day SLR is not winning in this genre they apparently created.
TechnoT5 TechnoT5 harigeharry harigeharry rerun119
Hey everyone. Time for promised update
I constantly listen to all the feedback even if im not very active here and i always think how we can improve things.
Short story:
- We increased bitrate of the scenes to ensure higher image quality
that should preserve more details - We added more sharpness (almost maximum of whats possible without oversharpening)
that should improve sharpness of the image - We refined PT color correction
that should bring better experience and better immersion - We fixed the halo around the model by shrinking down the alpha mask.
that will help to get rid of annoying halo and improve immersion - US PT studio is working now with Melody Marks scene being released end of august
Channel Camryn is filmed a week ago
Demi Hawks booked for august 22
and more coming soon
You will start noticing the changes listed above with current releases except for the scene with Lia Lin
The scene with Lia is unfixable due to focus mistake on production side. We cant do anything about it
While i applied maximum sharpness it helps only to some extent.
Long story:
Talking about EU PT studio it is obvious that most of the models will be European.
- Yes a lot of you dont like the girls
- Yes a lot of them dont speack English well
Those two points 
i can't change. I cant give those girls English lessons or bring American girls to Europe.
So that's something out of my powers. Yet it affects scenes performance.
American passthrough studio was recently built and its coming to its full potential now.
I recently stepped in as a post-production team lead like 2 months ago.
Since then there've been several changes implemented to improve quality of the scenes and not only passthrough.
There are two sides production and post-production.
And as you may have noticed with Lia Lin scene - what was messed up on production side sometime unfixable in post despite common practice of fixing in post.
With this i dont blame the Production team, we are all humans and things happen, but post-production team constantly gives our feedback on every little thing we notice while post-processing the footage.
The rest is on production side to test and change things based on the given feedback.
I'm in constant contact with George, producer of EU PT scenes and i have suggested several improvements to improve image quality such as:
- Better/moderate light
on previous US PT set different light setup was used. George operates his lights to his knowledge and tries to fit to the same conditions.
From my personal opinion the model is lit too well and the contrast/depth is partly lost because of that.
As from what i know George equipped his set with new lights to fix that problem, These newer light scenes will be released in about a month. - Lense / focus
The clarity of the picture was bugging me as well for as long as the EU PT started.
i was thinking for all that time what could be the problem.
im pretty sure George figured out the focus
i was suspecting that too much light was causing the loss of details and i suggested to rethink the lighting setup
i was suspecting the the lense wasn't clear enough and i suggested to clean lense better prior every set with wet tissue wipes instead of dry tissue
Now regarding
- Positions:
i'm not very proficient on production side, though i've been on several sets, but i'm sure George is reading comments on every PT scene released and tries to improve what users don't like. - Scale
There are three types of scale which i will explain below
Firstly the prehistory:
as you may know or now know we gave up on the modified lense if you know what it is you know
but basically canon lense has a smaller ipd of 60mm which is alsmot smallest ipd of any grownup man
we had a modified lense that was widened manually to 62-64 mm to improve scale issue while back then
since the project is unique and technically complicated it requires a lot to be made right
the latest lenses were causing us issues with focus and clarity so we went back to original lenses
its a tradeoff between clarity and scale
Now still about Scale and its 3 types:
- Type 1. Regular NON-PT scenes
For non-pt scenes scale is somewhat fine.
Considering that we use unmodified lense, we managed to preserse somewhat natural scale of the model.
While Camera Lens IPD does affect the scale, another important thig that affects the scale is the background/room.
In regular scenes the Model and the Background are backed to each other because its one image.
However with the help of AI Passthrough technology you can now enjoy regular scenes in PT.
But we set the scale or horizontal alignment without consideration of the use of AI PT on these scenes.
So when you watch regular scenes with its original background the scale should be fine.
Should you turn on the AI passthrough the scale might change because you now have a different background that is cast from you headset cameras which have different ipd then original camera on which the scene was filmed.
But i think regular scenes are mostly watched without PT. I might be wrong here, but we are researching this matter. - Type 2. Passthrough scenes.
Now here is the tricky part.
While we film PT scenes on the same Camera that is used for regular scenes - these are specifically Passthrough scenees and most users watch it in Passthrough mode, while some might be watching it without passthrough and that's why we color the green background into grey/dark gray to let those users enjoy it without pt.
I also noticed that the model in PT looks small, while when you switch off PT she looks normal size.
As stated in previous point - headset cameras have different IPD and that is what causing this scale missmatch.
That is somewhat easily fixable by adjusting the horizontal alignment either in our post processing or in the headset settings.
Now the question is: To which users should be alight the scale? The ones who watch it in PT or those who watch in without PT?
You'd say its PT right? We should alight it to the majority of the PT users. But now whoever watches those scenes without PT the model will appear bigger.
We now increase scale specifically for PT scenes so when you watch it in PT the model is somewhat normal size.
I think it's still not enought and we might increase scale even more so you dont have to fiddle with the settings.
But one thing remain problematic is that when the model moves back and forth her scale changes from small to normal. And that is yet to be solved but not on production or post-production side. - Type 3. AI Passthrough.
A combination of Regular and Passthrough scenes
Not really the point of this thread but its a passthrough and scale is affected there as well.
Here we cant help with the scale since its a regular scene with regular background and our goal is to preserve scale that is relevant with the background.
I've raised my feedback regarding that issue and its up to the relevant department that can manage that matter.
One thing its good for is that you can clearly notice a difference of scale between PT scale and non PT scale while you switch in between.
Regarding positions
Ive been to several production sets but I'm not really sure if its possible to fix positions
How do you even expect to watch sitting, laying, standing and missionary from one single position?
i don't get that part
besides, if we to go ahead and adjust the image/dick to one constant point it would look like this:
thats just one example
you can see that dicks are in same spot but the image gets cropped
not sure how that would look in headset but i think not very good
on production side i can only imagine
By the way
most probably visiting George in September with member of US production to check some things and hopefully fix something.
Still there is always a room for improvement and i will be doing my best to try and make it better
I'd love to help everyone with everything but simply don't have that much time
Manny_S Thanks for your time to post a response here, really appreciated. And it gives us hope that things WILL improve, seeing your suggestions and ideas for improvement. Like said, it's obvious that this isn't easy, nobody here thinks it is. Really hoping you will get it right!
harigeharry those awesome PT quality video's that Simsense made. Then he leaves to another site
Did you ever watch one of Simsense's videos on the other site(s)? While the image quality is still good, I think all of those videos were even more messed up scaling or projection-wise, objects getting bigger the farther away they are from the viewer. I would think there is no way to fix this kind of weird inverse geometry with any player.
It's really a pity that after the latest Simsense AR PT videos for SLR were pretty perfect, neither of them seem to be able to produce on this level anymore. I basically stopped watching new AR PT, but at least for me there is more than enough AI PT to compensate.
- Edited
Thanks for the in-depth response.
Manny_S How do you even expect to watch sitting, laying, standing and missionary from one single position?
i don't get that part
besides, if we to go ahead and adjust the image/dick to one constant point it would look like this:
thats just one example
you can see that dicks are in same spot but the image gets cropped
You put the dick in the same spot in the frame during production, in every axis. I would try attaching laser pointers to the rig, to make sure the dick is always the same place in the frame and the same distance. If that's not possible then at least mark the spot on the monitor. Most viewers are watching VR porn from a fixed position, either seated or laying down, then they adjust the image in the player so the cocks line up. The viewer's cock never moves around, it doesn't get nearer or further, so if the viewer is imagining the stunt cock is theirs then the stunt cock should never move in the frame, either. This means you have to compose the shot appropriately, with the dick as low down in the frame as possible without any distortion at all or possibility of being cropped out during action. If that all sounds like a hassle and too technical for porn, then I'm sorry, but VR is super technical and directors have to accept that.
I noticed the scale changing depending on how close the model is, and I did suggest that was a limitation of the rig and out of your control. I guess you can fix it in post to an extent, but that wouldn't be easy. Given a choice I probably prefer slightly too big than too small, due to image quality / detail after the viewer has corrected scale. You can shrink the model and retain detail but you can't create detail from a tiny model.
As for sharpening - I'd say all the AR scenes are already over-sharpened, even from back in the Simsense days. When I compare Simsense scenes now to all the pass-through on SLR, it's a pretty stark difference. Current Simsense scenes are about as "giant" in terms as scale as you can go without being broken and require some time to fix in the player (Heresphere). I guess the AR Porn scenes look so good and detailed, without any obvious sharpening, because the scale is big, and that's the trade-off. Go smaller and more realistic and give up detail or get ultimate image quality but have everyone bitch about scale. Good luck bro 
The director not knowing how to light or follow lighting guidelines and having to do it his way all sounds like a concern, honestly. If you're going to roll out multiple studios when you're dealing with such a technical enterprise, these factors should be consistent. You are right to raise the issue about lighting being too "flat" in PT sometimes, so you can lose the sense of space and cohesion with the PT background, but you do have to make sure that the viewer can always see faces and penetration clearly IMHO. Also, flat over-lit scenes are not necessarily flattering - these deer-in-headlight VR scenes generally are the opposite of traditional large light source glamor-style porn shoots. Hopefully you can keep evolving the lighting so that it works practically and also artistically.
Casting is an issue because as I've said before all the Euro models have been overused, and have clearly been selected on the basis of profile likes or google rankings etc. We were introduced to multiple US models that had never even shot VR when Simsense was running things - Venus Vixen for example. Now we have Sexbabes greatest hits from 2019. So not only do they speak little/no English but the casting is incredibly predictable and uninspired. I already gave you a wish list of Euro talent, but that's just my biased opinion - bottom line, be more creative please! If you need help with casting, you know where we are (although good luck getting a consensus LOL).
Happy to discuss further.
- Edited
vrpicasso Awesome suggestions, love the one regarding laser pointer. Seems actually quite easy to attach a laser pointer to the rig and make sure the actor's dick is always in the right spot. This way you will avoid a lot of scaling issues and problems. It might make the production more difficult of course and might cause the actors some frustration, but everybody needs to understand that this is high end stuff and not some simple 2d porn.
- Edited
BTW, something that has been suggested several times but so far nobody has used, is the idea to use a male doll and let the female actor ride that. Actually in PT you dont want the actor to move and ideally you want to remove his dick so you see your own sliding into the vagina (which now is feasible with some PT AI movies). I really think this could yield some awesome results and actually might make production easier. The only difficult thing is the cum shot of course, pretty much everybody hates fake cum. But to me this seems an interesting road to explore.
harigeharry Have you seen PT when the dick's removed? You don't see your own dick, you see a hole, and maybe catch a glimpse of yourself jacking off or your Handy or whatever but it doesn't magically replace the stunt cock with your own.
I'm all for a Tommy torso for models who don't shoot b/g otherwise, especially for PT where we're removing the dude anyways, but the dick / dildo has to stay.
Manny_S I appreciate the writeup but I just have to say one thing about your scale arguments (type 1,2,3). I'm sorry but this just don't make sense to me. Scale is either incorrect or correct (or at least ballpark correct or incorrect) whether a scene is passthrough or not. The scale was fine for a quite a while with the modified lens, it's also fine in the scenes of a lot of other studios as well (I turn the passthrough on on those all the time).
Currently it's too small in passthrough AND too small in the latest SLR originals I watched. Sure, it's glaringly obvious in passthrough as you get the discrepancy between "your" scale and what feels like a doll scale or something but to me it's also very obvious in non passthrough to the point I'd skip the scene. I get the canon camera has a low IPD, however, since there is now more than one studio releasing good quality scenes with proper scale (even within the SLR network) something should be possible.
About positions, from what I've seen myself regarding the positions (might not be what you where replying too exactly): The issue here is a combination off very small scale and the dick being placed to high up (like at your belly level). This is the worst of two worlds as you can't correct this. The only way you can technically do this is by very aggressive alterations in both the zoom and right setting which will make the image all malformed. When this happens in a passthrough scene it makes the scene pretty much unwatchable.
Anyways, this might be a bit of a harsh writeup and I don't mean to attack you or anything as I appreciate the effort you obviously put into the post. Also these issues can hardly be fixed in post. However since you are the one that is pointing them out: I don't think the sacrifices you talk about should have to be made. I don't know what some of the other studios are using nowadays but apparently there are options out there that do proper scale and good image quality well at the same time. Some with better image quality SLR ever had. Maybe, there are other options or at least get back to the point SLR had a working setup?
- Edited
vrpicasso Well in some clips it actually works really well. But it only works when the cock is not moving much, the VR cock and yours need to really line up all the time, hence that's why I think that it will work way better with a male doll than a real actor.
You had me at Chanel Camryn ... 
...
But seriously, awesome post Manny!
Its absolutely fantastic that you are looking out for us and encouraging the team to improve, at least to get back to the good old days, but at most to hopefully improve on that!
Super excited about all the upcoming releases 
.
- Edited
vrpicasso I personally find it highly distracting when an actor's dick is too different from mine (shape/size/color/hair/(un)circumsized/whatever), I just can't get trick my brain into thinking that that's my dick that I'm seeing. Not sure if I'm alone here or others feel like that too at times, but sometimes I find it quite distracting and immersion breaking.
On the other hand, in those PT AI clips where the actor has his dick quite still and the girl is just riding it and the AI has the actor's dick filtered out, it sometimes really looks and feels like my own dick is sliding into the girl. I agree, most of the times this doesnt work well, because the actor's dick just is moving too much and then it's also immersion breaking when you just see the world around you through the actor's dick. But when it does work, it's just really so awesome. And I strongly believe that the best way to get this right is with a male torso. But anyway, it's a bit related but also a bit offtopic to this thread here
.SLR Originals need to have the sharpening toned down
Manny_S Thanks for writing this. I don't watch PT but I felt like people didn't understand what must be going on behind the scenes.
I do have a question about the camera. Was the Simsense scenes shot with the modified camera?
If this camera causes so much headache why do you guys use it in the first place? A couple of the other big studios don't use it for all of the reasons you mentioned. I have hated the existence of this camera from day one. It set VR porn back by a couple of years in the giant land. It is still ruining some other studios year after year. Is it really just so you can say that you film in 8K? Is there no other 8k cameras? Why not shoot PT with the old camera? I wish you would go back to the old camera for all of your scenes. It still looks better than the newest stuff you guys put out.