  There are many reasons for utilising 3D animation and virtual reality in
sexuality research. Apart from providing a mean with which to (re)experience
certain situations there are four main advantages: a) bespoke animated stimuli
can be created and customized, which is especially important when researching
paraphilia and sexual preferences, b) stimulus production is less expensive and
easier to produce compared to real world stimuli, c) virtual reality allows us
to capture data such as physiological reasons to stimuli, that we would not be
able to otherwise (without resorting to self-report measures which are
especially problematic in this research domain), d) ethical, legal, and health
and safety issues are less complex since neither physical nor psychological
harm is caused to animated characters allowing for the safe presentation of
stimuli involving vulnerable targets. The animation sub-group has been
exploring so far several production quality levels and various animation
procedures in a number of available software. The aim is to develop static as
well as dynamic, interactive sexual stimuli for sexual diagnostic and
therapeutic purposes. We are aware of number of ethical issues related to the
use of virtual reality in proposed research are analysed in this chapter.
