SERIES : PROXIMITY ACROSS REALITIES | SXJournal #3 | Part 2

Two explorers in the metaverse are researching avatar identity along with digital intimacy to determine how humans connect, express and feel themselves across different realities. 

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They meet in a beautiful virtual space to experiment with device interactivity and touch simulation, to explore avatar proximity and to strengthen their phantom sense. 

Following is a separate journal entry with her perspective.

SXJournal | Interactivity #3 Part 2

09/02/2026

Explorer 2

Today’s experiment encompassed so many things! The intent was to test SPS [1] functionality, practise positioning of our avatars and track awareness of our physical arousal and body temperature whilst doing this. We are testing how virtual immersion operates and what supports it and what interferes with it. Obviously, a lot of practice is required for any new skill set so I was excited today to get hands-on with my new friend.

We visited a new world with a gel lounge, a mesh that deforms when we jump into it, like a jelly pool. The colours, the quality and delicacy of the texture and the sense of being held in a flexible slippery hammock delights my senses and makes me feel relaxed almost instantly. I drop down under the surface of the gel to enjoy the visual of my fellow explorer in a female avatar with their legs open, wearing a tiny bikini, and reclining back. The mesh distorts my vision much like being underwater and this activates the naughty concept of diving under the water just to look at the girls from that perspective. I felt like a teenager, the beginning of my arousal. 

My friend is embodying a new avatar and we are exploring the potential for erotic roleplay within its design features. What a lovely surprise when I move closer to them and lay my head on their chest - I hear a heartbeat! I rest there enjoying the phantom sensations moving through my body, feeling their pectoral muscles and the rise and fall of their breathing… Increase in my arousal by 25% noted. This feature gave even more life to this being and triggered immediate feelings of close proximity, intimacy, care and relaxation. 

I turned on my SPS to front target, as I had a device inserted. I discovered that SPS works not only with sockets, i.e. a penetration device and an orifice, but with the simple intersection of the avatar’s bodies at the active contact point. With my limited experience, I thought that we had to simulate touching with the hand or penetration to activate my device, but it’s better than that! The FrotOthers command suddenly made SPS play much more creative. Quite by accident, we found that my partner’s foot engaged the contact point extremely well. We experimented with positions that fostered the strongest sense of proximity, with my friend having full body tracking and me in half body. Setting up positions is a very immersion-breaking activity but must be done, so the quicker I learn how to move my virtual body and utilize my playspace, and use my camera to see myself, the better my immersion and continuity of arousal will be. 

We moved to another room in the map, a cosy cushioned area with a glass screen exposing a psychedelic mushroom forest. My partner laid down IRL and got comfortable and then I was able to sit on top of them using GogoLoco. This took a little bit of fine adjustment to hit the good connection between the contact points, but when we did, it worked well to give a steady vibration to both parties.

Arousal heightened to 50% with the combination of contact of our avatar bodies, the raised room temperature due to the heat of all the engines in my VR room and the visuals in my mirror and camera. My headset heats my forehead and my laptop gets super hot even though I have a direct fan system on both. 

I find combining my personal mirror at 70 percent opacity and my VRChat camera with 2 pins gives me the visual stimulation of the scene that I need to be immersed and aroused simultaneously. It’s imperative to see the location and positions of the avatars from multiple viewpoints for a few reasons:

• To get the interaction between the avatars as realistic as possible 

• To make sure we are not clipping into each other

• To embody this avatar form

• To see what my partner is doing out of my field of view

Then the next level of the experiment was engaged: how does SPS work with a penetrator? This part was rather disappointing because I found my device didn’t activate until there was full contact and clipping (going inside) of the avatars. The contact point was too far inside their body, or I was not coming from the right angle. For my own visual pleasure, I like the body proximity to look as realistic as possible, meaning not transgressing the boundaries of my partner’s skin.

More experimentation needed on this. So we returned to the foot stimulation as I watched my partner’s hips moving, gyrating, pushing up with their full body tracking. Arousal 100% attained. 

Overall, it was an interesting investigation that linked senses and sensations and intimacy across realities and gifted me a new pathway to pleasure. 

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Footnote 1

SPS = Super Plug Shader = a popular, free deformation shader used in custom avatars to make body parts like tails, ears, hair and genitals move realistically and flexibly, replacing older systems like DPS (Dynamic Penetration System) for advanced physics and blending without needing custom SDKs. 

#phantomsense #VRconnection #digitalintimacy #embodiment #VRforeplay #selfexpression #sxjournal #reflections #sxtech #interactivity #pleasure