The Future of Porn Is VR, and Toronto’s Holodexxx Are Making It Realer Than Ever
As a webcam performer, Daisy Destin has worked in — and out of — many outfits: denim cutaways and a stetson, knee-high stockings and cat ears, and cowboy boots with nothing else at all. No getup, though, is as weird as the one she wore to a shoot last February.
“I was in a Velcro suit covered in little balls,” says Destin. “And I had to wear it with heels on.”
It was, of course, a motion-capture (or Mo-cap) outfit, and Destin wasn’t having sex but performing it, using a large dildo and the reclining body of her husband, Hank, as props. “I would basically pretend to ride him for eight hours,” says Destin. “Hopefully they washed that suit.”
As Destin and Hank worked, 12 infrared cameras caught the light bouncing off the Teflon-covered balls, enabling a nearby computer to generate a moving stick-figure rendering — called a 3-D skeleton — of Destin. Her role was similar to that of a stunt performer or Andy Serkis in Lord of the Rings. In the months to come, her motions will double for some of the most popular actors in adult entertainment: Tori Black, Riley Reid, Mia Malkova, and Jynx Maze.
Destin’s client, a Toronto start-up called Holodexxx, is angling to be the biggest player in porn — an industry struggling to generate revenue in a world where millions of videos are streamed for free. None of the company’s three partners — Morgan Young, Craig Alguire, and Chris Abell — have a background in adult entertainment, but two are former videogame developers, which means they have something veteran porn producers don’t: technological know-how. And porn, once the domain of horny luddites with a hotel room and a digital camera, is about to get high tech.
Perhaps, in the last few months, you’ve come across a virtual-reality (VR) adult film on a forum like YouPorn or PornHub. You were probably disappointed with what you saw: grainy images, shoddy parallax, and bodies so badly distorted they seemed inhuman. Sure, you could put on a VR headset — maybe one of the cardboard prototypes that sells for $15 online — and “navigate” the film by moving your head. But that’s about as interactive as the experience got.
The Holodexxx guys are envisioning something completely different: a gamified porn platform that combines Mo-cap, VR, and photogrammetry — a technology in which multiple 2-D pictures are fused to create 3-D composites. Photogrammetry is used in topographic map-making, and the images it renders are unbelievably detailed. “You can see the characters’ pores and scars,” says Destin. Holodexxx is building the kind of all-encompassing VR environment that viewers — or rather, players — can lose themselves in.
To get the visuals right, the guys studied hundreds of hours of porn and became experts in the subtleties of sexual interactions.
I met Young and Alguire at Toronto’s Drake Hotel bar last June. Neither comes across as a porn bro: no slicked-back hair, shirts dangerously unbuttoned, or Joe Francis sleaze. Alguire is a skinny bearded guy with a boyish smile, and Young, a thoughtful speaker in a plaid shirt and baseball cap, is happily married. They hope that their boy-next-door personas will help normalize their product. “We’ve got nothing to hide,” says Alguire. “We’re regular dudes.”
Since incorporating in the summer of 2015, Holodexxx has been moving fast. A prototype version of its game — compatible with Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear, and HTC Vive headsets, as well PC desktop and laptop devices — will be available this fall through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. Then the company will open up to angel investors, on whom they’re depending to bring in an additional $2 million. “Surprisingly, we have a lot of interest from China,” says Young. “Investors there are super into VR.”
When Holodexxx’s consumer product finally goes online, the guys hope it will set a new industry standard and be worth tens of millions, maybe more. In these early days, though, VR products are difficult to valuate, since nobody is selling much of anything — nor will they until headsets go mainstream.
Regardless, X-rated VR is surely coming soon, if not from Holodexxx then from somebody else. And it’s going to change not just the consumer experience but also the ethical landscape of the porn industry, making it physically safer for performers while raising knotty questions about how their digital personas are managed. First, though, Holodexxx must get to market, which means navigating a range of challenges, from the big (how do you make a VR environment seem human and intimate?) to the small (once you’ve built that world, how do you enable users to navigate it?). “We kind of assume that it’s going to be a one-handed experience,” says Alguire, wincing.
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Young and Alguire met four years ago as game developers at Ubisoft. They discovered photogrammetry and VR, however, while consulting on a freelance project: an interactive children’s book featuring 3-D renderings of statues. The endeavour went nowhere, but it got them thinking about less-family-friendly applications for the technology. “Early on, we had joked around about how this is going to be amazing for porn,” says Alguire. “We didn’t think we’d be the ones producing it.” Gradually, though, the joke turned serious, and in 2014, the duo brought on Chris Abell, an acquaintance with film-industry experience, as an investor and partner.
Porn star Skin Diamond gets her image captured by Holodexxx’s photogrammetry rig.
Abell began making connections with Los Angeles-based adult entertainment agencies. (Holodexxx is more interested in the California star system, with its influential players, than in the scrappier Montreal and Toronto porn scenes). Meanwhile, Young and Alguire built infrastructure to set themselves apart from less-tech-savvy competitors. In addition to the Mo-cap system, they’ve custom built a photogrammetry rig: 112 stick-mounted digital cameras encircling a plywood stage. The stars stand, naked with arms outstretched, at the centre of this array, allowing the cameras to capture their bodies from every angle, in garish light. “The armpit is as well lit as the front of the face,” says Alguire.
The photographic data is then fed into a computer program, which stitches the 112 2-D images together into a static 3D composite — a digital avatar. Holodexxx’s prototype game will have two avatars: a male stand-in for the user and a female star, but the company wants to offer more fluid gender-play options soon. After the shots, the stars perform about 200 scripted lines — Shakespearean bons mots like “oh yeah” and “harder” — in front of a green screen. And that’s all. The sex happens virtually, when the avatar, the lines, and Destin’s Mo-cap simulations are merged, in real time, at the user’s command. (For Holodexxx, using a body double is more economical than having the stars perform actual sex, particularly since Destin’s one-time performance can be paired with multiple avatars.)
The shoots may be simple, but the post-production work — the process through which data becomes porn — definitely isn’t. To get the visuals right, the guys studied hundreds of hours of porn — “We tended to not watch together because that’s weird,” says Alguire — and became experts in the subtleties of sexual interactions: the arched eyebrows, half sighs, and flirtatious glances that make sex feel human. In the game, your head motions and hand controls will determine how your avatar acts, and the avatar you’re interacting with must respond realistically. If you get close to the porn star avatar, her eyes will cross; if you turn out the lights, her pupils will dilate; and if you lean forward unexpectedly, she’ll lean back just as fast. This attention to detail may seem pedantic, but it’s really essential. “There are a lot of human actions that you don’t really notice day to day,” says Young. “But if they’re not in our game, it will freak you out.”
In July, I tested an early prototype at the company’s temporary offices in suburban Toronto. Once I put on my Oculus headset, I found myself in a swanky, if slightly pixelated, hotel room. My body had been replaced with that of porn star Christian Wilde — a lean, muscular dude. Riley Reid sat on my lap, waiting, with seemingly endless patience, for me to make the first move.
Over the long term, Young predicts that VR will change not just how people masturbate but how they have sex
Using the hand-held control console, I could choose my location — the bed, the bathroom, the couch — and my preferred sex position. And then we were at it. Or rather, my digital Wilde avatar was at it with the digital Reid avatar. And, if the sex felt too kinetic to be lifelike, it was thrilling all the same. I’ve already watched Reid a few times (okay, more than a few times) in online videos, but now I was close enough to see the details of her tattoos and imagine her breath on my skin. For such a mediated experience, it was incredibly intimate. And the sexual chemistry was decent, too, particularly since Wilde, a gay porn star, would be unlikely to hook up with Reid in real life.
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Porn isn’t real life, though, and that’s the point of Holodexxx. “If you don’t like Riley Reid’s hair colour, you’ll be able to change it,” says Young. “You can give her red hair or big boobs. These are possibilities that will exist only through our pipeline.” No doubt, critics will be creeped out by the notion of an endlessly customizable porn star (confession: I sort of am), but porn has always been more about gratification than reciprocity. And, really, is customizing a porn-star avatar all that different from trawling through PornHub, video by video, person by person, to satisfy your erotic whims?
When discussing the ethics of porn, people tend to get tongue tied. The business of performing sex for money isn’t inherently exploitative (or at least it’s no more exploitative than other kinds of physical or performative labour) but neither is it inherently safe. And as the recent rape and sexual assault allegations against male porn star James Deen demonstrate, porn sets can be toxic places for women. Plus, research shows that excessive porn consumption may make offline, human-to-human encounters challenging, since porn warps expectations and may contribute to erectile dysfunction.
A (very early) 3-D rendering of Lexi Belle, one of Holodexxx’s stars.
Then again, few people can claim the moral high ground. Even anti-porn critics are often porn users. The American Psychological Association says that as many as 99 per cent of men watch porn, and the percentages for women may be as high as 86. The genre thrives, in part, because it serves real human needs: the need to explore, to fantasize, and to imaginatively simulate experiences that aren’t safely or consensually available otherwise. Holodexxx wants to better meet those demands. “In a point-of-view film, if you have a male body, you have a male body,” says Young. “But with us, if you’re trans or if you identify with a female body, you can have that experience.”
Young also argues, convincingly, that the Holodexxx production process — in which sexual labour is performed not by stars but by their avatars — is physically safer for women. It also enables stars to perform acts without actually doing them. Jynx Maze, for example, doesn’t have sex with women on camera but is open to doing it virtually through Holodexxx.
Young is quick to acknowledge, however, that by introducing avatars, Holodexxx is also creating new vulnerabilities. “Stars sign over the right to control their likeness in 3-D,” he says. “There’s definitely a high degree of risk involved in that. And a high degree of responsibility for us.”
As the digital world becomes flooded with avatars — not just in porn but also in gaming — the concept of “personality rights” will occupy an important position in legal contracts and conversations. The term refers to an individual’s right over how his or her face, body, and words are represented publicly. In 2009, Activision allowed players of Guitar Hero 5 to “unlock” the Kurt Cobain avatar and have him rap like Flavor Flav or rock out like Bon Jovi. In 2012, crowds at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival saw a reanimated Tupac perform alongside Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. (Pac greeted audiences with “What the fuck is up, Coachella?” — words he never said in real life.) Some fans found these creations futuristic and cool, but others thought they were exploitative, particularly since the men in question had died.
Alguire argues, however, that his company is investing in amicable, long-term relationships. That means checking in with stars about how their avatars are managed and paying not just one-time labour fees but royalties. The guys haven’t figured out their pricing model yet, but it will focus heavily on downloadable content, perhaps with membership plans and pay-to-play deals thrown in the mix. VR offers the possibility of a sellable porn product — an enticing prospect at a time in which X-rated content is often distributed for free in order to bolster page views or promote performers’ one-on-one cam work. For Holodexxx, though, keeping performers paid and on board isn’t just good HR; it’s good business. “Our stars have millions of social media followers,” says Alguire. “People listen to what they say.”
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It isn’t true that all roads lead to Rome, but it may be true that all new technologies lead to porn. The oil painting replaced the erotic woodcut just as decisively as the Internet killed the nudie booth. The average pornographer isn’t a tech maverick, but the industry still drives innovation. It’s often argued, for instance, that Blu-ray got the edge on its chief competitor, HD DVD, only when it became the favoured medium among porn producers.
The Holodexxx guys are currently tied up in prosaic distribution problems — in liberal Canada, it’s illegal to process payments for legal online porn, so transactions must pass through a third-party handler — but that isn’t stopping them from thinking big about the future. They’re hammering out a partnership with Vstroker, a company making electronic gadgets that attach to the end of a Fleshlight. Vstroker devices will measure the pace of a user’s masturbatory movements, feed the data back into the game, and dictate how the avatars interact. In the near future, jerking off will become a form of game play.
Over the long term, though, Young predicts that VR will change not just how people masturbate but how they have sex. “Imagine your partner’s on a business trip in Japan,” he says. “You could jump into the Metaverse, see your partner’s avatar body, and engage in a sexual experience half a world away.” Gamified Fleshlights and vibrators would make the experience real.
Allowing his thoughts to wander, Young muses that you could also theoretically swap bodies with your partner or have sex with each other using porn-star surrogates. Then he takes the thought experiment to its logical conclusion: “Perhaps you don’t even need your partner stimulating you. It could be an algorithm. Then you’re having sex with your machine, which is crazy.”
