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Comment by nugget | Hacker News Reader

People talk a lot about futuristic sex robots but what about VR experiences that are not only physical but deeply emotional - wherein you experience seduction and actually fall in love? Think about riding in a weeks long 18 hour a day RPG crusade with a Milla Jovovich lookalike Joan of Arc who, in between battles, is irreparably infatuated with you. The tech needed to achieve this level of total immersion may yet be decades away but once it arrives it's scary to imagine - love, not sex, being the real emotional Achilles tendon of the human experience.

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Putting 3d models of people in VR is easy. Getting them to do anything interesting and not just be a few scripted things is much harder and very far from a solved problem.

Maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe all you need is the character to look you in the eyes. But I suspect most people would need more. Someone you can actually talk to. Not just pick multiple choice responses

So part of the product can involve hiring a random human to play the part of the love interest, with the VR putting an attractive face and voice on their actions. Heck, that person can even be another customer getting the exact same thing out of you, chosen because your google/facebook profile suggests your personalities are sufficiently compatible.

This idea is related to the plot of The Diamond Age.

People do this already in Virtual Worlds. Although they typically meet in a social setting, there may well be matchmaking services that I just haven't heard of.

It's not "stereoscopic HMD" type VR - yet. There are projects (CtrlAltStudio, for one) working on that.

This comment, and its parent, makes me quite sure that prostitution in the future is going to be weird.

Remember the articles about eye contact & 36 questions to fall in love a few years back? http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashion/no-37-big-wedding-... and similar?

Take the answers from the human participant, make appropriate "mmhmm" noises, vary randomly around the center of the human participant's statements (in a space generated from the answers of other participants), and play back with continued eye contact and the face and body of high status persons.

I guarantee you could have that face ask for $5 for a ticket for next time and get it.

It depends on the degree, I guess. Maybe you don't need to have the character directly interact with you (the player), but just with your character? I developed a feelings of affection to video game characters once or twice in my life, and that was just thanks to good scripted dialogues and long, engaging storyline.

isn't this the same kind of territory currently being explored by Westworld? In Westworld instead of being VR it is actual reality (with robots) but the dilemmas are quite similar

Indeed, reciprocation/interactivity is not a requirement for obsessive love. See Dorothy Tennov's theory of "limerence". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerence

Looking at the "waifu" culture in Anime, it doesn't seem like you need a particularly deep or compelling experience. What you describe already happens; it just might start happening for a slightly broader array of people.

The movie "Her" is a great movie that touches on this.

If you like what you wrote (I do) in terms of people falling for robots, then watch if you haven't: Ex-Machina and Her (2013).

Also recommended: Robot & Frank.

Not about love but friendship. In any case, a good movie.

I would still rather have sex with real women, 18 hours a day. I'm sure VR porn will be big, but I don't think it will be possible to perfectly replicate sex without somehow directly intercepting signals to the brain. Standing there with a VR headset and some vibrating thing wrapped around my genitals will never compare to the real thing.

Well, a lot of people did have feels for Eden at the end of Rez...

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