虚拟现实技术真的是条大鱼吗？

    弗雷斯特研究公司（Forrester Research）分析师詹姆斯•麦克奎维说：“Facebook收购Oculus似乎更多的是出于恐惧，而非真正的业务需要。Facebook错过了向移动技术的转型，感觉Facebook的高管们似乎发誓绝不再错过任何重大转型。然而，与移动技术不同，虚拟现实永远只能是小众技术，即便它最终能发展成非常令人兴奋的小众技术。”

    麦克奎维表示，这是因为，虚拟现实仍然受限于其硬件规模和相应内容的匮乏，最重要的是，它还受限于人的五种感官的极限值。试图将虚拟现实移植到社会领域，就更不靠谱了。

    麦克奎维称：“你的Facebook好友短期内肯定不会发布虚拟现实内容。这使得社交媒体和虚拟现实之间的匹配不那么显而易见。”

    这已有先例：10年前，林登实验室（Linden Lab）推出的第二人生（Second Life）游戏为玩家们营造了一个3D虚拟世界。用户在这个世界里可自定义角色，还能进行社交活动。林登实验室本身和它的理念一时间备受关注，但这款游戏在鼎盛时期也仅有10万玩家同时在线，最终未能被普遍接受。

    如今的虚拟现实技术要先进得多，也更有可能被广泛采用，但也可能面临同样的命运：只对小众具有吸引力。高德纳（Gartner）研究分析师布赖恩•布劳说：“我可以告诉你们，沉浸式虚拟现实不是移动设备之后的下一个大平台。我们认为可穿戴设备非常重要。但不仅限于头戴式显示器，还包括手表、健康追踪器，甚至联网的家电和汽车。”但即便如此，可穿戴设备仍有很长的路要走。

    布劳说：“如今，Oculus仅仅是一款头戴式显示器产品，而不是一个内容体系。我们知道，未来真正驱动虚拟现实生态系统向前发展的是内容。因此，我们要想看到虚拟现实平台出现，还有很多整合工作要做。”（财富中文网）

    译者：项航

    "Facebook's acquisition of Oculus seems motivated more by fear than by good business alignment," Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey says. "Facebook missed the shift to mobile, and it feels like Facebook executives have sworn to never miss another big shift again. Only unlike mobile, virtual reality will only ever be a niche, even if it eventually becomes a very exciting one."

    That's because virtual reality is still constrained by the size of its hardware, the lack of content for it, and above all, the saturation limits of your five senses, McQuivey says. Try to graft that onto a social experience, and the proposition becomes even more fraught.

    "Your Facebook friends certainly won't be developing virtual reality content anytime soon," McQuivey says, "which makes the fit between social media and virtual reality less than obvious."

    It has been done before: 10 years ago, Linden Lab's Second Life came to market with a 3-D virtual world where users could customize an avatar and socialize with each other. The company and concept received much attention for a time, but peaked at fewer than 100,000 concurrent users, ultimately failing to achieve broad adoption.

    Today's VR technology, while far more sophisticated and more likely to see broader adoption, also risks the same fate: niche appeal. "I can tell you that immersive VR is not the next big platform after mobile," Gartner research analyst Brian Blau says. "We see wearable devices as very important, but it's not just limited to head-mounted displays. It includes products like watches, fitness trackers, or even connected devices such as home appliances and cars."And even then, it's a long-term play at best.

    "Today, Oculus is only an HMD product," Blau says. "It's not a content system, and we know that it's content that will actually drive any VR ecosystem forward. So many more pieces need to come together before we see the emergence of a VR platform."