JUST a few paces away from the Colosseum in Rome is one of the most important places in the history of western art. It is where we get the word Grotesque from and jump-started a lot of the art of the European Renaissance.  But hardly anybody goes there, it is officially an active archeological site and not open to the public.

As with many things in Rome though there are exceptions. It is possible to join a tour of the site, conducted by the archeologists who work there, which leads you through the huge chambers of a forgotten palace built for Emperor Nero.  The entire thing is buried under another ruin, which is heaped over with soil and has become a hill.

The palace is called Domus Aurea  (Latin, “Golden House”), and as well as having huge vaulted chambers covered in paintings would have had fabulous views out over terraces, artificial lakes, and gardens.  

All of which can’t be seen today because it is now all underground.

But, when I visited this amazing place last year at one point in the tour we were taken into a chamber full of low flat benches, spaced out around the room, and on each bench was something I’d seen but never tried.  

A Virtual Reality headset.

The charming Italian guide invited us to put them on, and after some shuffling of hardhats and glasses we got them on.  Why hardhats?  We were, after all, inside an active archeological site and hardhats were mandatory.  

VR activated and wow

Then the VR headset activated and wow.

Instead of being in a dimly lit underground chamber, suddenly I was in a vaulted room open on one side to amazing views over the gardens and the city beyond.  The viewpoint slowly shifted as though we were moving outside, though the guide reminded us to remain seated so we were going nowhere.  The impression was overwhelmingly real of traveling outside and seeing the palace as nobody since Nero and those of his time had ever seen it.

Taking the headset off at the end of the short 3D trip through a Roman palace still left me with a sense of wonder.  There is no way a video, a picture, or even a 3D animation could have created the sensation of inhabiting a different scene in the way that Domus Aurea VR simulation had.

That was the point when I finally understood why VR was important.  

It isn’t about the headset

What do I want to experience

It is the difference between understanding and feel.

Between watching and being.

Between knowing about and experiencing.

What do I want to experience? What does everybody who reads this article want to experience? Being with a cam girl model in real life!!  Only safely, conveniently, only when you want it, and hence Virtually.

Cost is a barrier

The promise of Virtual Reality technology to provide that isn’t new.  Although I may be late to understanding why VR is important many other people have got this for some time. But there are always barriers.

Technology is a barrier, the cost is a barrier, general acceptance is a barrier.

A 2018 YouGov study shows that 55% of respondents said that the expense was the main barrier, and that hadn’t changed in a year even though prices had in fact fallen substantially during that period.

Infographic: Familiarity With VR Increases But Cost Remains A Hurdle | Statista You will find more infographics at Statista

And most of all, looking like a complete dweeb while wearing a headset is a barrier.

Lack of coolness

I think that point is the line about “It can lead to isolation” on that graph.  Isolation as in everybody will think you look stupid if they catch you wearing one.

Looking like a complete dweeb while wearing a headset is a barrier

If the lack of coolness factor could kill even Google Glasses then what hope have we to get people to wear weighty monstrosities on their head that make them look like Luke Skywalker with an opaque helmet over his head in that scene where he learns about the Force?

Only there is one place where it doesn’t matter.

 And that is in the privacy of your den, bedroom, computer room, or wherever else it is you choose to watch cam girls.

So VR and Cam Girls.  A match made in techno-heaven?

Seems it should be, only there are still barriers.

It isn’t that not enough people own headsets, despite some slowdown in growth there is still a strong growth expected

Estimates suggest that in 2020, sales of augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) headsets will reach around 5.5 million units. Forecasts project massive growth in both AR and VR headset sales in the coming years, with both technologies combined expected to sell over 26 million units per year by 2023.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/653390/worldwide-virtual-and-augmented-reality-headset-shipments/

Not all those sales are to wealthy, young males, but you know that a lot more than half of that is going to be guys.

Sales falling

And the prices continue to drop. Price cuts lead to growing sales through 2018, but it has leveled off.

In 2019 sales plateaued and started to fall.

Of those that sold, most were for PlayStation but Oculus Quest brought up a strong second place.

VR Headset Sales Drop Over 40% Compared to Last Year — Why?

So the viewers are out there, even if the growth is slowing, but before people can view, there needs to be something to watch.

VR Porn

Now there is plenty of VR porn available, you can go to SexLikeReal or just search your favorite tube site to find it.  But that’s produced by professional production companies, even the “amateur porn” is generally created by quite dedicated amateurs who have as much gear and often more dedication than the professionals.

Cam girls are different, either they are independent contractors who, like everybody else in the gig economy, are in fierce competition and don’t have the greatest cash flow.  Or they are working in countries with a lower cost of living where the cam income has more impact.  Or they are working with studios where large groups are organized together.  

In all of those cases, cash for investment in hardware is either non-existent or limited.

A lot of camgirls even have to worry about the investment in buying a new Lush or a better lighting rig, things which could pay back in earnings in a day or a week.

What is needed is cheaper but still usable VR Cameras.  A few years ago Google put its weight behind a new standard called VR180, the idea was that you didn’t need 360 degrees of vision, that half that would be good enough.  After all, most scenes have an object to view, be it a mountain or a cam girl, and you don’t really need to see what is behind you.

Unfortunately, that initiative stalled and quietly died, like a lot of Google ideas.  They do tend to just put stuff out there to see if it will sink or swim, and in the case of VR180, it died with Leonove and Yi, who were supposed to make the hardware, backing out.

Instagram has taken up the torch, or the cam, with their Insta380 products which allow you to record and post great images to Instagram with a 360-degree field of view.

Even the cheapest model, the “Insta 360 ONE”, comes in at $164.  Which enough to buy two Lush from Lovense. And that model can’t easily plug into a PC as a webcam, for that you need to move up to the Insta360 One R Twin model which is more like $490.

Hardware investment

You don’t really need, or necessarily want, 360 degrees for VR though. In most cases, a view of 180 degrees, which is offered by a fish-eye lens webcam, provides the correct view. There are a few such models available, you can go to Amazon.com and find some 180-degree fish eye webcams, but they are all from vendors you have never heard of.

And they still cost hundreds.

Unless a cam girl can see an immediate pay-back on that investment she won’t take the leap.  

And it gets worse.  Broadcasting in VR would mean doing so on one of the very limited number of sites that support VR, most of which don’t seem to be accepting individual models.

Broadcasting on obscure sites is nothing new for a cam girl, you have to try out different options to find the one that has a community that works for you, but that normally means split camming and sending a feed to your regular site while also sending it to the other new cam site you are trying.

This isn’t so easy, or possible at all, with VR when one site wants a regular webcam view and the other wants a 180-degree VR stream.  Basically, it comes down to you will need to separate broadcasting setups at the same time, two cameras, two computers, enough internet bandwidth for both.

And this isn’t even considering the furniture and lighting layout to give you space to move about in your room while staying visible and well lighted.

Yes, all this is complex and the dedicated cam girls give a lot of thought to getting it lighting and viewpoints that work well. 

Although we are not talking Hollywood movie production here at the same time it isn’t just flipping a switch and going online to Facetime with your folks back home.  This stuff requires effort to get it right, and what is right for VR is not necessarily the same for other forms of broadcasting.

Twittersphere doesn’t care

That means you do need a dedicated and motivated Cam girl, or a studio, to get everything set up for a VR stream.

I asked the Twittersphere if VR camming was a thing, and all it told me was that not many people cared enough to answer a question:

Who is doing Adult VR Webcam streaming now?

Of the individual cam girls, the best known as an independent VR cam girl is Ela Darling who made the headlines as the “First VR Cam Girl” in 2015, but today she is working on virtual romance and dating in a simulated environment called ViRo.club.

That means real people, but with their images hidden behind computer graphic CGI avatars, so not quite what most viewers mean as a camming in VR.

What about actual adult cam sites that support VR Headsets, with either a single cam giving a wide 2D image that is head-tracked to the viewer, or even 3D stereoscopic views?  These are strangely and, to me surprisingly, rare given how much buzz there is and general agreement that the idea is cool and wanted.

Everybody in the cam industry I spoke to about it, who hadn’t tried it yet, said that it sounded cool and were very curious as to what demand there was or how it was going.

One webcam industry veteran noted that at least for the last 5 years every panel at adult industry conferences about webcamming has had the question of VR come up, but always nothing much has happened.

A lot of sites have tried the idea at some point, many around 2015 to 2018, got something working, and did some publicity.  But then let it slide when it didn’t catch on. When I started researching this I found lots of old news and promo videos about Cam4 doing VR.

“Our VR technology, CAM4VR, was the only VR solution in the industry to provide a 360 degree, live, voice to voice VR experience. ” said a spokesperson of Cam4. ” We were featured at SXSW, Vice, Rolling Stone and other showcases and publications. Currently our VR technology is on hold as we continue research into the medium and audience interest.”  

If established sites have mostly dropped the idea that’s ok because there are always new companies that continue to develop adult VR webcam sites.  And perhaps one of these will hit that sweet spot between demand and supply.

Are the top cam sites doing Adult VR?

So what about those big sites?  Looking at some of the major ones out there you’ll only find one that is supporting VR as a regular feature.

Chaturbate – Doesn’t support adult VR webcams, and never has it seems.

Bongacams.com – Not doing anything with VR at the moment, but perhaps in the future according to one of their reps.

Cam4 – With help from Ela Darling they have tried to launch this and made some announcements a few times over the years, in 2016 there was a “launch”, in 2017 they were in the Observer, in 2018 there were interviews with VR cam girls.  But it all seems to have slid away and today when I asked a contact there she didn’t even know VR had ever existed at the site in the past.  It seems like a dead-end and no current VR girls are camming there.

MyFreeCams – Doesn’t support VR now and doesn’t seem to have ever done so.

Stripchat – This is the only major site that is currently offering a VR selection.  Therefore more about them later.  

Livejasmin.com – Does not support it right now.

Camsoda – Tried it in 2018, and combined it with Kiiroo toys and RealDolls as well, but it came to nothing as today there is no VR section on the site.

Streamate – Nope, nothing related to VR available here, despite how big the site is.

Flirt4Free – “We’ve dabbled a bit, but haven’t invested a lot in it like some of the other cam companies have. ” Said Jeff Wilson, Director of Business Development at VS Media the owners of Flirt4Free.com, “Not really on the roadmap right now. We kind of see it as a slow moving train and we think we’ll be able to jump on at any time.”

ImLive – Nothing here, although ImLive was leading the way with some technology years ago they seem to be giving VR a miss.

MyDirtyHobby – This German site is very high tech, and I would have thought the German audience would be keen on this type of new engineering, but they have no plans to do VR at the moment.

Camcontacts – Have done nothing about VR, and are sticking with their tried-and-true privates-only model.

DXLive – THe Japanese love tech and I would have thought that this Japanese site would be a great candidate, but neither they nor FC2, the other big Japanese cam girl site, have any involvement with VR

VR Cam Girl Sites

StripChat

Stripchat.com – The only major cam site now offering a selection of adult VR webcams.  With around 15 to 20 rooms online at a time, it offers a typical 180-degree view of models that can be watched using the usual headset viewers.  Nobody offers a 360-degree view, but then who wants to look behind them anyway.  The 180 degree is enough for immersiveness, though some VR cameras are now offering 200 or 210-degree views.

These views are mostly 2D, but occasionally you see a broadcaster like the one pictured above who has the two-camera setup necessary to do 3D stereoscopic viewing.  This does add to the feelingly of being there, but even without that, the headset view is very immersive anyway.

Whether the 3D adds much, the promise is really getting the “tits in your face” effect, depends as much on the camera as on your headset and your eyesight.  If like me, you need glasses the added 3D effect is probably not worth it.

At stripchat.com they use the https://gizmovr.com/ VR browser and player, this means that they can offer the VR experience on all the platforms that this viewer supports.  With built-in support for Oculus GO or Rift, HTC Vive, and Gear VR they have covered all the main bases.  Support for Android devices using the basic Google Cardboard hardware works as well, but Apple guys are left out as iOS and macOS don’t make the list.

Striphat uses a tipping model as well as privates so it is hard to know how much the cam girls are earning here, but the privates they are offering are a wide range of costs.  I saw from 8 tokens a minute to 90 tokens/minute, with everything in between well-represented.  As tokens at Stripchat cost about 89 cents that means a substantial cost.  However, I didn’t see many models go into private while I watched therefore that doesn’t really show great demand.

The pricing the models are charging for VR privates are the same range as for regular privates, they are not charging any premium for this service.  Whether that is the right thing to do is open to debate of course but it does imply that VR is being present as just a norm, not something of extra value.

Buying tokens at Stripchat can be done in a variety of package sizes and there are discounts for the larger ones.  The best rates mean each token costs $0.89 each.  Multiplying that up means that the VR cam girl streams at Stripchat.com cost from $6.24/minute for the lowest option, which is not that common, up to the highest price of $80.10/minute.

Remember that the models get at best 56% of that money though.

XHamsterLive.com gets a mention here, but only because it is some kind of either Whitelabel or Joint Venture with Stripchat, you can log in to stripchat.com using your xhamster ID.  Therefore it has the exact same VR models, payment scheme, accounts, and the rest.

SexLikeReal

SexLikeReal.com – Here we get into a different site, at least it seems so.  It is a VR focused site that makes, distributes, and sells VR based videos.    

They also have a Live VR Cams section, and this has its own software options.  Choose from viewers using DeoVR for GearVR, Google Cardboard, or Daydream.  Working for PC, Android, Quest /; Go and iPhone this covers all the bases.  They also offer their own “SLR App”, which is a downloadable for the same platforms.

I can’t imagine a lot of people are willing to download and install an executable from a site like this, but at least it is an option.

The problem here is that online models are all the same as the ones you see on Stripchat.com.  Although the interface for viewing is different, and everything about token-purchasing, and paying for privates or tipping, is different.  The models are the same.

This makes more sense when you move onto the next site which is DreamCam.com.

DreamCam.com

The models you’ll find on DreamCam are exactly the same ones you’ll see in the VR section of Stripchat.com, and hence SexLikeReal.com, but unlike SC there are no non-VR rooms available at dreamcam.com  

It would seem that there is a studio here and it is providing VR cam feeds, that is the only thing they provide.  There is a big upside to this in that the studio and the models really understand how to do VR properly.  But on the downside, there is little variety and no place at all for models to sign up.

You’ll see the same models online at the three sites but the actual video streams for each model are sometimes different.  Some of the streams are weirdly simply mirrored left-to-right, which must be very confusing for the model. In other rooms, there are clearly two different cameras and streaming PCs, one sending to StripChat and the other to DreamCam.

Lastly, the token purchasing, pricing per minute, and even minimum-per-show limits are all different between the two sites even for the same model.  

That means if you find a model at stripchat.com who you want to go private with, but her pricing is a little high, it is wise to be a careful shopper and check out the offer she has going at dreamcam.com, or SexLikeReal, because it might be better there.

If this all seems very repetitive and, while the VR experiences are interesting, the range of options is pretty small in terms of models to view, style of models, and sites.

Just when I started to think this was it, and there was nothing else to see I found one more VR cam site.  

XVR.Chat

Sadly XVR.Chat is offline. The rest of this section therefore is “historical”.

XVR.Chat – The only dedicated and unique VR cam site on this list, it only started in mid-2019 but is already growing rapidly with a variety of cam girls, mostly studio but some models have an at-home look.

They even won “VR Site of the Year” in the YNOT Awards in 2019, though I missed that at the time, perhaps because it didn’t say “cam” anywhere in it!  They are nominated again this year, this time for “Best Emerging Company”.

I’ve written a bit about the XVR.chat site before and the site is very interesting even though it is so new.

There aren’t that many models online at any one time, perhaps 10, but many are in some sort of in-between Online and Offline – referred to as “Mode”.  Models in this category are sometimes available to view, or if not are showing a preview recorded video.  It isn’t clear but I suppose these are models logged into the system but not actually broadcasting yet.

More important is that the developers of this site have gone to great lengths to reduce the barrier for entry for new viewers of VR cams.  Although you can’t avoid some hardware, they have reduced the software requirement by using a Web standard variously called WebVR and now WebXR for “extended reality”, that’s VR and AR combined and probably a bit more. 

This is supported by modern browsers, including Chrome on Android, and means that you can view VR feeds with no additional software.

That makes the experience at XVR.Chat easier than with the other sites that require specific software.  If you have got dedicated hardware like an Oculus it probably doesn’t matter, but if you are just trying out VR using a phone and Google Cardboard viewer then being able to do it all in Chrome is great.

At the same time, the site seems unfinished, there are sections of the FAQ page which are simply blank.  Signing up as a model doesn’t explain what the deal is for broadcasters, it just asks for an ID document before doing anything else.

And the link to their partner for the VR webcam hardware, Terpon Corp, seems to have disappeared.  While their preferred interactive sex toy maker, Kiiroo, doesn’t even mention them.

Altogether it doesn’t feel that the site is managing to keep up with digital rot so it is hard to be confident about it.

Why then has this site not taken off in a bigger way?  Perhaps the ambivalence of many potential viewers, and the reluctance of models to invest in the extra hardware, when regular 3D camming works perfectly well.  Not just to satisfy customers but to make a profit for cam girls and site operators alike.

There is one more site that is on my list for camming in VR, and that is Cammingvr.com. The announcement says that it aims to be a dedicated VR cam girl site, but has yet to open and is now two months past their opening target date without any update.

So is 2020 going to be the year of VR camming?  

We’ve been here before:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jp5797/what-its-like-to-be-the-first-vr-cam-girl

Then it was a thing very briefly for Camsoda (2014), Cam4 (2015), Camsoda (2018).

It is hard to believe that it is going to change substantially any time soon.

So what is a VR Cam viewer to do now?  Probably the best thing is to sign up at the cam sites I’ve mentioned above, you probably already have a Stripchat account and it is easy to create the others for comparison.

For models who are keen to try something new and are VR fans themselves, then options are highly limited.  You could try signing up at XVR.chat but it doesn’t look that promising, it is worth a try though.

Secondly, if you have the following to set up your own private cam site, as many models are now considering, then you could look for a technology provider that can support VR.  Of the cam site software, I’ve seen only Miricam that can do this.  This is a product for models who want to broadcast live cam streams on their own site just on their own or perhaps with a few friends.  It is a complete, but small scale, live camming site software.  I reached out to Mark Prince of 2Much.net who is behind the software, according to Mark it fully supports VR for streaming and viewing but doesn’t have a VR specific interface.

“There has not been much demand for it yet, mostly because models don’t want to invest in new VR Cameras. ” said Mark Prince of 2Much.net ” This is too bad because I get a considerable amount of information requests from Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR owners who are looking to get the most out of their VR Hardware,  but there are no models to chat within VR.  It seems that there is more demand than supply at the moment. “

With things like Skype and Zoom providing no support at all for VR, this makes it the only viable option for the at-home independent cam girl.

For the viewer who has the itch to try the immersive VR experience with a camgirl, then there are few choices and little variety at the moment.

Does anybody want it?

“I have never had anyone ever ask us about VR” said Jeffrey Miller, CTO of Odysseycam publishers of software for building new cam sites.

What seems to be holding up the development is the ease of buying and setting up a wide-angle webcam. Perhaps when the cost of these drops enough, and that could be very soon, then VR for camming will finally take off.

For now, though, I’ll remember the grand vistas over Rome as seen via an Oculus headset and be content with that.

TL;DNR: Questions and Answers about VR Camming

Q: Where can I watch camgirls in VR?

A: Stripchat and XVR.Chat

Q: Where can I broadcast as a cam model in VR?

There are no options unless you start your own site, talk to Miricam.

Q: Is VR the same as 3D?

No, VR means you can move your head around and see from different angles. It isn’t 3D.  Some VR cams, very few, are in 3D with two cameras for stereoscopic vision, but it isn’t common.  Even without 3D the VR still is a lot more immersive than using a PC or phone.

Q: Is VR 360 or 180 degrees?

All the cam sites are offering 180 or less.  That means you don’t get to see “behind” the broadcasting PC, which is probably just as well as that is where cam girls put their junk.

Q: Does VR mean animated cartoon girls?

Not in this article, animated avatars are a thing but even more niche. Some people call that Virtual Reality but it isn’t what we are talking about here.

Q: What is the cheapest hardware I need to watch VR cam girls?

At minimum a high-end smartphone and a “Google Cardboard” viewer, which can be literally cardboard or cheap plastic with two lenses.  You’ll see the model fine but may struggle to read the menus and chat.