Facebook has created a new “social VR” team, led by two video gaming executives, ahead of the launch of its Oculus Rift¹ headset next month.

在即将于下月推出Oculus Rift头盔之前，Facebook于上周日宣布成立了新的“虚拟现实社交”(social VR)团队，由两位视频游戏高管负责领导。

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.

该部门是Facebook自两年前以20亿美元收购Oculus之后，首次开始考虑如何将其核心社交网络服务带入虚拟现实。

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.

该团队的负责人是来自视频游戏行业的丹尼尔礠姆斯(Daniel James)和迈克布斯(Mike Booth)，这两位高管都有创建3D多人游戏的经验。

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 mingled² on a virtual-reality high street, created by author Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash.

这意味着Facebook希望其虚拟现实社区能类似于《第二人生》(Second Life)——十年前一度大为流行的网络世界，或能类似于科幻小说中的Metaverse概念。Metaverse是一个庞大的网络社区，用户的数字化身可以在虚拟现实大街上互动，这一概念来自于作家尼尔斯蒂芬森(Neal Stephenson)1992年的小说《雪崩》(Snow Crash)。

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.

Facebook旗下的Oculus已经尝试通过“Social Alpha”应用为Gear VR头盔带来通信和社交网络功能。当一小群观众在虚拟影院屏幕上观看在线视频时，他们可以通过“Social Alpha”互相聊天。Oculus还研发了Toybox，这款用于Rift的游戏能让两个人在一个小房间里一起打乒乓球和其他游戏。

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.

在巴塞罗那世界移动通信大会(Mobile World Congress)上，Facebook首席执行官马克丠克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)在三星(Samsung)的新闻发布会上表示，继文字、照片、视频之后，虚拟现实将是在线交流的下一步。

“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.”

扎克伯格表示：“虚拟现实是下一个平台，任何人都可以在上面体验、分享他们想要的任何事物。”这意味着朋友和同事们可以围坐在虚拟篝火旁聚会，在私人影院观看电影，或利用该技术举行小组会议。“虚拟现实将成为社交性最高的平台。”

He added that Facebook had dedicated³ “hundreds of our best engineers” to VR, to help create experiences that make “you feel like you’re actually there” with friends.

他还表示Facebook已将“数百名我们最棒的工程师”致力于虚拟现实，帮助营造出让“你觉得就像真的与朋友在一起”的体验。

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 Silicon⁴ Valley’s Altspace VR and vTime by UK-based digital studio Starship.

Facebook的虚拟现实社交团队与Oculus的工程师和设计师有着紧密合作，该团队将与几家初创企业展开竞争，这些企业已试图将视频会议和社交网络带入虚拟现实，比如硅谷的Altspace VR和英国数字媒体Starship开发的vTime。

“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.

Facebook在一篇帖子中表示：“我们已经帮助人们在多种移动设备上建立联系，从Facebook、Instagram到Messenger和WhatsApp，现在我们想将这种方式应用于虚拟现实的新媒体。”