There's plenty of other activities we do offline that could be recreated in simulspace: fine food, sports... Heck, the books make a point of saying that being stuck as an infomorph blows, and that living space and a body is something many save up for. It's possible that even in the future, VR just doesn't compare to real experiences.

Why do you play tabletop RPGs when it's more convenient and quicker to do CRPGs? Because you're still trapped within the designer's script.

I kind of feel obliged to point out that with all the neural mapping that's been done, simulspace should be capable of simulating any real sensations, and there's nothing stopping you from using indentured infomorph sex slaves rather than AIs...

Simply put, because people can be traditional about these things sometimes. You're not just paying for an orgasm, you're paying to fuck a flesh and blood (and smart matter and electrons) [i]person[/i].

The same reason why restaurants and bars and such will always exist. Humans are social creatures, and while VR and XP can be as good as real life, in the flesh is preferable by instinct alone. Hell I'd even wager that things like movie theaters still exist in some form, although now it would be more focused on AR than a movie screen. I guarantee that if a transhuman future involves the extinction of honest to god bars and nightclubs in favor of entirely mesh-based social interactions because "we've evolved beyond such trivial matters", consider me a radical biocon in that future.

But you don't need to simulate above a certain resolution (Which is much higher than the Universe's resolution). You are also not simulating the whole world, just a nice room with a bed and some naked people.

Because in simulspace, there is no real suffering being caused.

The question might as well be "why does anyone live outside of a simulspace at all?". Psychologically, many humans have a tendency to prefer the real over the fantasy, no matter how good the fantasy is. As for sex in specific, I guess that has to do with two things. First off due to how simulspace works it is possible that if you are simply accessing it but normally living in a biomorph you might experience all the sensations of an orgasm but due to your brain basically being hijacked your body might not respond accordingly. The game doesn't state anything either way, but perhaps simulspace sex doesn't come with real-world ejaculation, male or female alike or won't cause your body to produce the same extreme oxytocin release you get with normal sex. Thus a simulspace experience might help with a psychological need but not cure the physical need. The second reason is cost. Really good simulspaces are difficult to construct and maintain. According to the EP core, a simulspace account can be fairly costly whereas a quick session with a pleasure pod (which are very cheap to buy for the brothel) is most likely a trivial cost. Sure, in the long run it might add up and make the simulspace cheaper, but if you only look to scratch your itch a couple times per week then a brothel is probably just as cheap if not more so. Just because you can hijack a brain and build simulspaces, it doesn't mean you can build very GOOD simulspaces. Making pleasure pods is a tried and working way, AND it provides real physical sex and not just the sensation thereof. Nevertheless, I imagine there are plenty of people in the transhuman future of EP that prefers simulspace experiences to real ones. People are different so there are things that cater to everyone. In one of my campaigns, there was a brothel that offered you to experience "a day in the life of a pleasure pod" by sleeving into a ghostrider module of one of their workers for a day. A friendly but somewhat crazy hacker friend of the player got his morph stolen while he was spending a day with one such pleasure pod since he left it at home and forgot to lock his door. He was great with mesh security but unfortunately a bit absent-minded when it comes to physical world security.

Xagroth wrote:

What makes you all think that EP is not a huge simulspace inside a TITAN-controlled box, and the 96% of humanity that escaped are in fact those who managed to avoid being "head-hugged" by TITANspawn? And all the "transhumanity" is just a giant experiment one or more TITAN intelligences are fiddling with... or trying to understand humanity...

Finally someone is listening to me! It's obvious when you think about it. Look around you, are most of those people really people or are they simulations? Don't trust the NPCs, they lie.

Just like a radioactive crab to a nuclear weapon...