Facebook新使命：在VR環(huán)境中社交

Facebook新使命：在VR環(huán)境中社交

將來，我們可能無需再使用FaceTime或Skype與遠方的朋友交流，或許只需要帶上虛擬現實頭盔，瞬間就讓你覺得好像與朋友身處一室中。

測試中可能遇到的詞匯和知識：

multiplayer 多人游戲['m?ltiplei?]

mingle 混合；交往['m??g(?)l]

spherical 球面的['sfer?k(?)l]

videoconference 可視會議['v?d?o,kɑnf?r?ns]

zombie 行尸走肉['z?mb?]

閱讀即將開始，建議您計算一下閱讀整篇文章所用時間，并對照我們在文章最后給出的參考值來估算您的閱讀速度。

Facebook creates ‘social virtual reality’ team（509words）

By Tim Bradshaw in San Francisco

* * *

Facebook has created a new “social VR” team, led by two video gaming executives, ahead of the launch of its Oculus Rift headset next month.

The unit, unveiled on Sunday, is the first time that Facebook has begun to consider how to bring its core social networking service into virtual reality, two years after acquiring Oculus for $2bn.

The team is led by two executives from the video games industry, Daniel James and Mike Booth, who both have backgrounds in creating 3D multiplayer experiences.

That implies that Facebook’s vision for its VR community could look something like Second Life, the online world that saw a brief surge of popularity 10 years ago, or the science fiction concept of the Metaverse, a vast online community where digital avatars mingled on a virtual-reality high street, created by author Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash.

At the same time as announcing the social VR team, Facebook said that users had uploaded 20,000 videos in VR-friendly 360-degree format, after it added the feature to its website and apps late last year. Millions of people watch these 360 or “spherical” videos, which let the user pan around a scene to look in any direction they choose, every day on Facebook, it said.

Facebook-owned Oculus has already experimented with bringing communication and social networking features through a “Social Alpha” for its Gear VR headset, which lets small groups of people chat as they watch online videos together on a virtual cinema screen, and with Toybox, a Rift game which lets two people play table tennis and other games in a small room together.

On Sunday, Samsung unveiled a new 360-degree camera for taking spherical photographs that can be viewed in its Gear VR headset, alongside new versions of its Galaxy smartphones.

On stage at Samsung’s press conference at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said that VR was the next step in online communications after text, photos and videos.

“VR is the next platform, where anyone can experience and share anything they want,” he said, suggesting that friends and colleagues will gather around virtual campfires, watch movies in a private theatre or hold group meetings using the technology. “VR is going to be the most social platform.”

He added that Facebook had dedicated “hundreds of our best engineers” to VR, to help create experiences that make “you feel like you’re actually there” with friends.

Facebook’s social VR team, working closely with Oculus’s engineers and designers, will compete with several start-ups that have already tried to bring videoconferencing and social networking into VR, such as Silicon Valley’s Altspace VR and vTime by UK-based digital studio Starship. Google is also investing heavily in VR, with a new smartphone-based headset said to launch later this year.

“We’ve already helped people connect in a wide variety of ways on mobile devices — ranging from Facebook and Instagram to Messenger and WhatsApp — and now we want to apply that same approach to the new medium of VR,” Facebook said in a blog post.

請根據您所讀到的文章內容，完成以下自測題目：

1. When Oculus was acquired by Facebook?

a. 2016

b. 2015

c. 2014

d. 1992

2. Who created the concept of” Metaverse”, as a vast online community?

a. a director

b. an author

c. a video gaming executive

d. the CEO of Facebook

3. What lets people chat as they watch online videos together by Oculus?

a. Gear VR glasses

b. Galaxy smartphone

c. Toybox

d. Gear VR headset

4. Who planned to launch a new VR smartphone-based headset later this year as well?

a. Altspace VR

b. Starship

c. Samsung

d. Google

[1] 答案c. 2014

解釋： 兩年前（2014年3月）Facebook宣布以20億美元收購虛擬現實設備Rift VR的制造商Oculus，當時該公司的這一舉動引起了輿論的一片嘩然。

[2] 答案b. an author

解釋：Metaverse是一個龐大的網絡社區(qū)，用戶的數字化身可以在虛擬現實大街上互動，這一概念來自于作家尼爾·斯蒂芬森(Neal Stephenson)1992年的小說《雪崩》(Snow Crash)。

[3] 答案d. Gear VR headset

解釋：Oculus已經嘗試為Gear VR頭盔帶來通信和社交網絡功能, 當一小群觀眾在虛擬影院屏幕上觀看在線視頻時，他們可以通過“Social Alpha”互相聊天。

[4] 答案d. Google

解釋：文章倒數第二段，谷歌也大力投資虛擬現實。