Yes, I’ll admit that I had misgivings with the Vision Pro when it was first revealed last year. But I covered virtual reality content for years at The Daily Dot, with a particular focus on adult content, and in all that time, I’ve never seen an AR/VR device so widely adopted as the Apple Vision Pro, and I want one.
Could this $3,499 computer become the “big thing” that truly brings AR and VR into the mainstream? Down the road, yes. I don’t recommend becoming a first generation user for any new expensive technology, let alone a souped up spiritual successor to Google Glass. But hey, the public interest in the Vision Pro impresses me. And so here I am, writing about it again.
However. The Apple Vision Pro has a glaring flaw, one that separates it from Meta’s beloved wireless Oculus Quest line. That’s right. You can’t watch VR porn on the device. Bummer.
What?! No Apple Vision Pro porn???
As 404 Media’s Jason Koebler reported earlier this week, it’s (mostly) impossible to watch VR porn on a Vision Pro at the moment. Sure, you can look at porn on your Vision Pro by heading over to a site like PornHub and watching whatever regular video suits your fancy. And yes, if you’re (like me) the type to follow a ton of sex workers and adult artists on Twitter, you can just head on over to X and start your, uh, gooning journey? Is that what it’s called these days? Anyway, you can do that too.
But if you’re an expert VR porn connoisseur, you’re out of luck. Save for Apple’s new Apple Immersive Video format in 3D 180 degrees and 8K, you can’t just download any old 180 degree, 3D side-by-side (SBS) VR video and start watching it as if you were using an Oculus Quest. The video will remain flat. This is a major problem for VR porn viewers, as 3D 180 SBS content is the contemporary gold standard in VR porn, placing viewers right in the center of the action.
Why doesn’t the Apple Vision Pro support NSFW content?
Chalk this up to more of an early adoption problem than a censorship issue.
The Apple Vision Pro’s iteration of Safari has WebXR support, a popular API for viewing VR content directly in a web browser, but implementation with popular VR porn sites is mixed in Apple’s web browser. Consensus on Reddit’s r/oculusnsfw seems to be that either Apple’s implementation of WebXR is subpar, or most VR porn websites have not properly implemented WebXR for Safari yet, given the Apple Vision Pro is very, very new. One Redditor said they were able to access the porn site VRSmash in 180, but the video content was stuck in 2K resolution with the quality “all washed out.”
“This will be a problem for every legitimate VR video site as well,” that user said, “Safari simply doesn’t work and Apple has little interest in fixing that. It’s gonna need to be a 3rd party app. The weird thing is they approved 3rd party VR video apps but none of them work.”
According to Koebler, one Redditor referred to the device as a “$3,500 chastity belt.” But to be honest? I highly expect VR porn will soon be available on the Vision Pro as time goes on. WebXR implementation with Safari will likely improve in some shape or form, and I think it’s inevitable that a 3rd party app of some kind will hit the Apple Vision Pro and make downloaded 3D 180 SBS content work properly. Especially given there’s an eager and hungry techie userbase craving VR porn content. As one Apple Vision Pro user said, the device is “so much sharper” and “high quality” compared to the Quest 3. So I think VR porn on Apple Vision Pro is a matter of when, not if.
As for VR adult games on the Vision Pro? That’s still an open question. But it seems like it could happen—if you have a gaming PC that can stream SteamVR to the device. Maybe you can play your PC VR smut that way.
(feature image: Apple)
Published: Feb 6, 2024 12:23 pm