2017考研英语拓展阅读：VR将如何改变我们的生活

　　考研英语阅读能力提升需要不断地积累练习，通过多阅读来积累词汇，提升阅读速度，强化把握主旨能力。2017考研复习之初，时间相对充裕，新东方在线建议大家每天多做一些阅读，可娱乐也可增长见闻，还能提升能力。下面一篇文章是关于VR将如何改变我们的生活。

2017考研英语拓展阅读：VR将如何改变我们的生活

　　Virtual Reality (VR) has been with us for many decades - at least as an idea - but the technology has now come of age.

　　虚拟现实(VR)在概念上起码已经存在数十年了-这项技术现在进入了快速发展的阶段。

　　And it’s not just gamers who are benefiting from the immersive possibilities it offers.

　　而且它不仅仅是游戏玩家从中得到浸入式体验这么简单。

　　Four experts, including Mark Bolas - former tutor of Palmer Luckey, who recently hand-delivered the first VR headset made by his company Oculus Rift - talked to the BBC World Service Inquiry programme about the future of VR.

　　四位专家向BBC世界服务咨询项目讲述了VR的未来，其中包括帕尔默拉基的前导师-马克博拉，他亲手交送了他的公司生产的第一副虚拟现实眼镜Oculus Rift。

　　Mark Bolas: Out of the lab

　　马克博拉：走出实验室

　　Mark Bolas is a professor at USC School of Cinematic Arts and a researcher at the Institute for Creative Technologies. He has been working in virtual reality since 1988.

　　马克博拉是美国南加州大学影视艺术学院的教授，同时是创新技术研究院的一名研究人员。他从1988年开始就从事虚拟现实的研究。

　　VR hits on so many levels. It’s a real out-of-body experience, and yet completely grounded in your body.

　　VR在多重层面上造成了冲击，它是一种真实的“灵魂出体”的经历，然而却又实实在在以你的身体为基础。

　　People have always wanted to master their environment, to extend our agency. We want our hands to be able to do more; that’s why we have hammers.

　　一直以来，人们总想掌控环境，拓展自身的能动性。我们希望用自己的双手做更多事情-这也是我们发明锤子的原因。

　　VR allows us to go beyond the limitations of physical tools to do anything that can be computed. If you want to create a two-mile high tower made out of toothpicks, you can do it.

　　VR让我们能够挣脱物理工具的限制，完成那些可以由计算机完成的事情。比如你想建造一个两英里高的牙签搭起来的塔，你完全可以做到。

　　I did a series of 14 different environments; one where you felt like you were very high and had to look down: that was the first time people found this sense of vertigo within a virtual environment. I did a world where you look up towards the sky and see fireworks exploding; that’s just magical.

　　我设置了14个不同系列的场景：在其中一个场景中，你会感觉自己非常高大，必须低下头来看东西-这是人们在虚拟环境中第一次有了眩晕感。我还创建了一个世界，在那里你抬头看天时能够看到绚丽的烟火;这些真的很神奇。

　　I wanted to build a tool so people could use it. The best way to do that was to stay away from the consumer market because it really wasn’t ready, and to go after industrial uses.

　　我想打造一种工具供人们使用，而最好的方法就是远离消费者市场，因为这个市场还没有做好充分的准备;所以最好的方式是工业用途。

　　So my company created a viewing system that actually meets the specs of modern VR.

　　因此我的公司创造了一个观察系统，它能够满足现代VR眼镜的规格要求。

　　Because it had such high resolution, commercial users could use it to solve real problems.

　　由于它具有高分辨率，商业用户能够利用它来解决实际问题。

　　Automobile companies used it for car design. Oil and gas industry used it to visualise data to figure out the right place to sink a well.

　　汽车公司用它来设计汽车;石油燃气产业用它来实现数据可视化从而发觉最佳掘井位置。

　　The next step was to make these cheap. Consumer VR up until then had a really narrow field of view; it was like looking through a tube of paper. Peripheral vision is really important for a visceral sense, and that’s what people really react to.

　　接下来要做的就是降低成本。但成本降低，用户的视野会变得非常狭窄，就像透过纸筒来进行观察。周边视觉对于身体感受来说非常重要，而那才是人们的真实反应。

　　To find a way to make it low cost and still retain that field of view, we harnessed the power of mobile phones - the screens, tracking and processing - and we figured out a lens design that was extremely inexpensive.

　　为了找到一个方法，使得降低成本的同时仍然保持视野开阔，我们借助了移动手机的力量-屏幕、跟踪和处理-我们还研究设计了一种非常便宜的镜头。

　　It’s been really fun playing all these years, but there’s something more important now, which is making it a space that allows us to harness our emotions, our desire to connect with people.

　　多年来进行这些研究真的非常有意思，但现在有了更重要的事情：我们要把它打造成一个能够把我们的感情、愿望与人们联系起来的空间。

　　I’m worried by our current computer interfaces. I watch people walking around like zombies with cell phones in their hands, and I have to manoeuvre a mouse to fill out little boxes on web forms in a horribly frustrating way. I think VR will allow us to transcend this.

　　我非常担心现有的电脑界面。我看到很多人捧着手机像僵尸一样走来走去，我还必须用鼠标在网页表单上填满那些空格，这种体验非常糟糕。我觉得VR将带领我们超越现状。

　　I don’t worry so much about where VR is going, I worry about where we currently are.

　　我并不怎么担心VR的未来走向，我担心的是我们现在处于什么阶段。

　　Maria Korolov: Work, rest and play

　　玛丽亚科罗缪夫：工作，休息和娱乐

　　Maria Korolov is a technology journalist who has devoted her career to writing about virtual reality.

　　玛丽亚科罗缪夫是科技记者，她专注于报道虚拟现实的一些文章。

　　The biggest way [VR is changing the workplace] is training and simulations. If you have to train somebody on a very expensive piece of machinery, you want to do it in a simulator. The Army, for example, has been an extremely early adopter, as has the air force.

　　[VR改变工作场所]最大的领域在于培训和仿真模拟。比如你想给某位员工培训一架特别昂贵的仪器，你肯定想在模拟器上进行培训。军队在这方面早早就采用了这种方法，空军也如此。

　　One recent example was a doctor [who] practised surgery on a tiny baby’s heart. He took scans of the heart, uploaded them to the computer and toured it with this little virtual reality headset, was able to plan out his surgery ahead of time, and saved the baby.

　　近期有一位医生在婴儿心脏上进行的手术就是一个很好的案例。他对心脏进行扫描，将数据上传至电脑，然后戴上这架轻便的虚拟现实头盔提前规划手术方案，最后拯救了这名婴儿。

　　In education, the biggest change has been Google Expeditions. Google has been seeding elementary schools with over 100,000 virtual reality headsets and lesson plans. Kids are able to go on a virtual reality field trip to, say, the surface of the moon.

　　在教育领域，最大的改变是“谷歌探险”。谷歌公司早就在多所小学发放了超过10万副虚拟现实头盔并进行了相关课程规划。孩子们能够进行一场虚拟现实旅行，比方说去月球表面的旅行。

　　Gamers want something visceral. When you’re riding a roller-coaster and you go down a hill, your stomach drops out: even though you know it’s not real, your body reacts as if it’s there. When I showed a shark simulation to people and they screamed, I laughed because, "Ha ha, they’re not real." Then I put it on and the shark came at me and I screamed, because it’s a physical reaction.

　　游戏玩家们想要获得身体上的感受。当你坐着过山车冲下一个山谷时，你会感到反胃-即使你清楚地知道这不是真实的，你的身体还是会做出反应。当我给人们看一个鲨鱼模型时，他们会大声尖叫，我会嘲笑他们，因为“哈哈，它们不是真的。”但当我戴上VR头盔看到鲨鱼冲向我时我也会尖叫，因为这是身体本能的反应。

　　The adult industry is jumping into this with everything they’ve got because it is so compelling. I have sampled it purely from a reviewer perspective, and it felt like you were in a locker room, and you don’t know where to look because everyone’s naked, and the lights are too bright, and they’re interacting with you. This is going to be big.

　　成人产业也正带着它们的产品进入这个领域，因为它太有竞争力了。我曾从一个旁观者的角度来进行过尝试，感觉就像你置身于一个衣帽间，你不知道该看哪里好，因为所有人都赤身裸体，灯光非常刺眼，并且他们都在和你互动。这个产业前景非常广阔。

　　The way the internet has changed the way we communicate information, virtual reality will change the way we communicate experiences.

　　就像互联网改变了我们信息沟通的方式一样，虚拟现实将改变我们体验沟通的方式。

　　If I wanted to show you what it’s like to cook a meal, I could invite you to my virtual apartment and take you through a virtual cooking class. If I wanted to experience a walk in the woods with you, I could take you to my favourite virtual woods.

　　如果我想教你如何做一顿美食，我可以邀请你到我的虚拟公寓来，带你参加一个虚拟烹饪课程。如果我想和你一起在树林中散步，我可以带你到我最喜欢的虚拟树林。

　　It will make the world even smaller than it is now. It will increase the ability of people to telecommute and work together across national boundaries dramatically. It’s definitely going to bring us closer together.

　　它将会使世界变得比现在更小。它会增强人类远距离办公的能力，使人们大幅度跨越国界实现共同办公。它一定会进一步缩小人们之间的距离。

【英语阅读资料】这里有↑↑↑