The underground industry chain is quietly taking shape. Is AV the most powerful booster for VR?

Lack of content, lack of content, lack of content - this is the most common comment about the current state of the VR industry since the end of 2015. So, what content can drive the development of the current VR industry? From the current situation, the trend of VR content is consistent with the inferences made explicitly or implicitly by many industry insiders before. VR adult movies are becoming a strong undercurrent that opens the door to virtual reality.

"The resources you want" have become the biggest selling point of VR

The places closest to consumers are often the most sensitive to market demand. Searching for "VR" or "virtual reality" as keywords on Taobao, the results have become this:

A year ago, when VR was less well-known, sellers were more inclined to turn cheap hardware products and gimmicky black technology concepts into the biggest highlights of their own stores. The large-scale change in decoration style at least shows two points: First, regardless of authenticity, VR adult resources have bid farewell to the early stage of "scarcity"; second, VR adult content has a large potential user group, and its influence cannot be underestimated.

We randomly investigated several stores that offer a large amount of "what you want" resources for free when you buy VR glasses, and found that most of the products are cheap mobile phone boxes, and the content needs to be downloaded by buyers themselves through tools such as Xunlei. There are even some "small movies" that can be watched online, and the transaction method of purchasing resources separately is basically not supported. In this way, it is more appropriate to say "buy resources to shoot products" rather than "buy products and get resources for free".

Players at home and abroad have taken action, and AV has become the new favorite of VR

In addition to this group of "smart" speculators on e-commerce platforms, some more powerful players at home and abroad have chosen to directly produce or distribute VR adult content. In March this year, Pornhub, the world's largest porn website, announced that it would cooperate with adult entertainment content provider BaDoinkVR to launch a virtual reality content section on the website; similarly, video service platforms specializing in VR porn content have also appeared in the United States and Spain.

Domestic entrepreneurs are also very interested in this field. According to reports, a Shenzhen team has opened a virtual brothel project in Australia; it is understood that a well-known game manufacturer has also started the VR process of AV in the island country.

From the effect point of view, pornographic content has indeed attracted a lot of attention for the promotion of VR. According to a report released by data analysis company SimilarWeb, from January to November last year, 2.7% of the reference traffic of Oculus Rift and Oculus website came from pornographic websites; data from another VR manufacturer used with mobile phones showed that 51.4% of the company's traffic came from a pornographic website that specializes in providing virtual reality content. It can be expected that after the VR market matures, the share of adult content will still not be ignored.

In fact, there is no shortage of relevant application scenarios in VR technology, but there has not been an explosion in any field in the past two years. There are technical reasons for this, but is there also a problem with scene design? The closed loop of the VR industry from content, platform, equipment to users was first formed in the field of adult movies, which may indicate that as long as the scene demand is strong enough, users are not so demanding on the actual experience quality.

Many of the technologies or applications that we are now accustomed to, their initial development was more or less due to the rigid needs of "adults". Now this process has shifted to the wave of VR. Is this a good sign?

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.