奇異之旅 用Oculus頭盔體驗虛擬現實

I stood on the ledge of a skyscraper and looked down at the cars—tiny specks, really—driving by on the street below. All that stood between me and the pavement was hundreds of feet of air.

我站在一幢摩天大樓的窗臺，俯視着街道上一輛輛猶如小螞蟻的汽車。我和地面之間只隔着幾百英尺厚的空氣。

Suddenly, a woman’s voice jolted me from my near-hypnosis: Step out, she said. Walk around.

突然，一個女性的聲音讓我從將近催眠的狀態中驚醒過來：“邁出去，走一走。”

Well, sure. Why not? (I told myself this with my usual cavalier attitude about danger.) Then my brain took over and my feet refused to budge for fear of falling off the edge. Nope—not going to happen, I told her.

好吧，當然，爲什麼不呢？（我對危險的態度就是如此漫不經心。）隨後，我的大腦突然變得清醒，我的腳也拒絕向前邁出一步。我告訴那個女聲：“不，我不會那樣做的。”

This was my first try of Oculus Rift, the virtual-reality goggles that can place a person wearing them into a sort of uncanny video game. Despite my initial skepticism, the technology seemed all-too realistic—to the point that I couldn’t overcome my natural instinct for self-preservation. Intellectually, I knew full-well I was standing safely inside a former military warehouse in San Francisco with a ridiculous looking electronic device strapped to me head. But my brain overrode logic and left me immobilized.

這是我第一次親身體驗Oculus Rift頭戴式顯示器。這款虛擬現實設備可以讓人體驗一些不可思議的視頻遊戲。儘管我一開始有點懷疑，但這種技術給人的感覺實在太真實了，甚至讓我差點失去了自我保護的本能。理智上，我深知我的本體還安安全全地待在舊金山一座廢棄的軍事倉庫裏，頭上戴着這個看起來很怪異的電子設備。但我的大腦卻失去了邏輯，讓我動彈不得。

Last year, in a bit of a head-scratching move, Facebook FB -0.67% acquired the startup behind this headset, Oculus VR, for $2 billion. The sci-fi technology seemed like a big departure for a company best known for a social network filled vacation photos, videos of cute kittens, and parents sharing silly stories about their children. But Facebook has big plans for Oculus that include video games, movies, and virtual doctor appointments. The goal is to bring people together in ways they never could before, Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s chief technology officer, said last week at the company’s developer conference.

去年Facebook做出了一個當時看來令人難以理解的決定，以20億美元的天價收購了該設備的製造商——創業公司Oculus VR。這項科幻技術貌似與Facebook的主業大相徑庭——Facebook給人的印象就是個用來分享旅遊照片、萌寵視頻和萌娃的社交網絡。但對於Oculus，Facebook卻有着雄心勃勃的計劃，包括視頻遊戲、電影和虛擬就診預約等領域。上週，Facebook首席科技官麥克o斯科羅普夫在該公司的開發者會議上表示，Oculus VR的目標是要以前所未有的方式將人們聚合在一起。

He used the example of his daughter’s birthday party and how some friends and family had missed it. In the future, they could instead wear Oculus to put themselves in the middle of the celebration, even if they are really thousands of miles away. “I wish that everyone would have been teleported to that moment,” Schroepfer told the audience.

他舉了自己女兒的例子。在女兒的生日宴會上，有些朋友和親人因爲有事沒能來參加。在未來，即便他們身在千里之外，他們也可以戴着Oculus置身於宴會上。斯科羅普夫對參會者表示：“當時我真希望每個人都能被‘傳輸’到宴會現場。”

Well, Facebook vision for Oculus is certainly ambitious. But there’s still a lot of technical work to be done to live up to the hype, as Schroepfer readily acknowledged. (The Oculus headset isn’t yet available to the general public. For now, only software developers can buy the headset to toy around with and invent ways to use it.) Moreover, does wearing bulky goggles that preclude face-to-face contact really bring you closer to friends and family? Or does it create distance and isolation?

Facebook顯然爲Oculus設定了雄心勃勃的未來。不過就連斯科羅普夫自己也承認，Oculus還有大量技術工作要做。（Oculus頭盔目前還不對大衆開放。目前只有軟件開發者可以購買這種設備，然後開發使用它的方式。）另外，戴着這種笨重的設備，是否真的能讓你離親人和朋友更近？還是會導致人與人之間變得更加疏遠和隔膜？

I hoped to find out in my test of Oculus, which involved the latest, prototype version of its headset, called Crescent Bay. For around 10 minutes, I tried it out in a dark empty room with a woman standing nearby to guide me (and keep me from wandering off a small floor mat and face-plant into a wall).

我希望通過這次測試找到答案。測試對象的是一款名叫Crescent Bay的最新版本。我在一間黑暗的房間裏測試了大約10分鐘，有一位女士站在一旁指導我（同時防止我走出地上的一塊墊子，並撞到牆上）。

In addition to standing on the skyscraper, I faced off with a snarling Tyrannosaurus Rex with a mouth full of sharp teeth. I was also caught in a street battle with bullets and explosions going off all around me while debris hurtled through the air in slow motion.

除了站在摩天大樓的邊緣以外，我還面對了一隻張着血盆大口、滿嘴白森森利齒的霸王龍。此外我還置身於一場街頭巷戰之中，身邊子彈橫飛，爆炸不斷，被炸起的廢墟以慢鏡頭飛過空中。

I could tilt my head up, down and behind me to get a different view, just like in real life. Images shifted smoothly with no lag time that would have made the experience seem phony. In a welcome sign, I never felt nauseous—a common problem reported by people who have used previous versions of Oculus. But my reaction never matched the vertigo I felt standing on the skyscraper ledge. Maybe my brain isn’t hardwired to fear slightly cartoonish dinosaurs and robots.

我可以擡頭、低頭或轉身，以獲取不同的角度，就像在現實中一樣。畫面的轉換非常流暢，也沒有出現導致失真感的畫面遲滯。在播放歡迎標誌時，我並未感覺到噁心——測試過之前版本的Oculus的人，都曾抱怨過這個問題。我只是在摩天大樓邊緣那一幕時感到了眩暈感，這或許是因爲我的大腦並不是很害怕卡通恐龍和機器人的緣故。

Next, I moved downstairs to try out Samsung Gear VR, a headset with a lower resolution display that seemed, in some ways, to be more immediately ready for prime time. I could easily imagine television and movie studios along with video game makers using the technology to make their productions more immersive.

測試完這款設備之後，我又下樓測試了三星的Gear VR，這款設備的分辨率稍低一些，但在某種程度上，它更有希望在短期內投入市場。我能很輕易地想象，影視製作公司以及遊戲製作商很可能利用這項技術讓他們的作品更有真實感。

While sitting in a chair, I dropped in on a Mongolian family filmed inside their yurt and thought how fantastic the technology would be as part of a documentary. I spun around to inspect every part of their home, although the family didn’t seem to notice me.

雖然我的身體坐在椅子上，但我的精神卻進入了一座蒙古人的圓頂帳篷。我不禁想，如果能把這項技術用在拍攝紀錄片上該多好。我轉頭仔細查看帳篷的各個角落，不過住在帳篷裏的這家蒙古人似乎並未注意到我。

I also spied a scene from the Hollywood movie Wild as actress Reese Witherspoon’s character, an exhausted backpacker, spoke with an apparition of her dead mother on a mountainside. They never saw me standing there between them, which made me feel almost like an eavesdropper.

我還出現在電影《荒野生存》的一幕場景——瑞茜o威瑟斯彭扮演的那個精疲力竭的揹包客正在山坡上與她母親的亡魂對話。她們並沒有看見我站在她們中間，讓我覺得自己像是一個偷聽者。

It was the same feeling watching Jerry Seinfeld warm up the crowd during Saturday Night Live‘s 40th anniversary show. I could watch the monologue from the perspective of atop the main camera near the audience. After a few seconds, I realized that celebrities filled most of the chairs around me. While Seinfeld joked, I turned my back to him and tried to pick out the actors I recognized like Adam Sandler, John Goodman, and Michael Douglas.

我又出現在了傑瑞o斯坦因菲爾德在《週六夜間秀》40週年慶的演出現場。我可以從主攝像機的視角看見他的表演。過了幾秒後，我意識到我身邊的椅子上坐滿了好萊塢的名人。當斯坦因菲爾德講笑話的時候，我轉過頭，認出了身後的幾個大牌明星，如亞當o桑德勒、約翰o古德曼和邁克爾o道格拉斯等等。

On one hand, it was an incredible experience to feel like I was there with Hollywood’s elite, and, course, the Mongolian family and the snarling dinosaur before. But I also felt a twinge of apprehension because it seemed so easy to confuse this virtual world for reality. In some ways, it could be a blessing by letting people better experience other cultures, like the Mongolian yurt, than they can by watching broadcast television. But I also feared the potential risk of some people choosing to spend most of their time in this fantasy world to escape their hum-drum existence and real human contact.

和好萊塢明星坐在一排，深入蒙古人家庭，面對咆哮的恐龍的感覺，的確非常震憾。但另一方面，我也感到了一絲恐懼，因爲這項技術實在非常容易讓人對真實與虛擬世界產生混淆。從某種程度上，這項技術的到來是一種福音，因爲它讓人可以更好地體驗其他文化——比如蒙古人的帳篷，這種效果是看電視無法比擬的。但我也擔心或許有些人會把大部分時間沉浸在虛擬世界裏，以逃避他們單調的人生，更加不願意從事真實的人際交往。