If I could succeed in any endeavor as an academic it would be perfecting what I call the virtual handshake.

作为一名学者 如果我能在任何方面取得成功 那一定就是把我所谓的虚拟握手完美化

And I don’t mean an actual handshake, I mean that metaphorically.

我不是真的在说握手 那只是个比喻而已

Why do we go to business meetings to be with other people?

我们为什么要去商业会议跟别人一起呢

Because there’s a social connection, this intimacy that when you’re in the same room

因为这样有社交联系 当你们在同一个屋里时有那种亲密感

it feels like you’re there with them and you can do eye contact and you can do subtle posture changes

你会感觉跟他们在一起 可以有眼神交流 可以稍微调整姿势

and you can have multiway conversations with sidelong glances, and it feels real.

侧眼一瞥就能跟别人产生多种交流 感觉很真实

We call that social presence. VR is not there yet.

我们把这叫做社会临场感 虚拟现实还没到这一步

But if you think about cars: 40,000 people died in the United States last year driving and 1.3 million people worldwide died in car accidents.

但是如果你想想车：去年美国有四万人死于车辆驾驶 全世界有130万人死于车祸

Think about the productivity lost by sitting in a box for an hour each way to and from work.

想一想我们在上下班的路上 坐在一个小盒子里失去的生产力

Think about the fossil fuel that we’re burning while we commute back and forth to work.

想一想我们穿梭在上下班路上消耗的化石燃料

Think about the road rage.

想一想那些路怒行为

Think about the germs that you get on public transportation.

想想你在公共交通上碰到的那些细菌

I’m not claiming that we should not see people; I love social connection.

我不是说我们不应该见任何人；我喜欢社交

What I’m saying is that there’s a subset of travel that if you think about it, why do we drive all the way to work so we can sit at a desk and pound on a computer?

我说的是 如果你想想的话 会发现旅行有子集 我们一路开车去上班 就是为了能坐在桌前敲电脑吗？

Maybe we only need to go two days to work.

或许我们只需要上两天班

And for those meetings that are not essential we need to put those in VR.

对于那些不必要的会议 我们可以用虚拟现实来解决

We cannot support a planet of 11 billion people—which we’ll be at quite soon—with everybody driving and flying everywhere using fossil fuels.

这个地球无法承受110亿人——很快就会达到这个数——使用化石燃料开着车 坐着飞机跑来跑去

It’s just not going to happen. So why don’t we have networked meetings yet?

这是不可能的 所以我们为什么还没有网络会议呢？

And the answer is because there’s this secret sauce, this social presence that we have face-to-face that we don’t get with videoconference yet.

答案就是这个秘密酱汁 我们在可视会议中还无法获得面对面时获得的那种社会临场感

And VR isn’t there yet. So what we need to do is to be able to track more body movements.

VR还没发展到这个程度 所以我们需要做的就是跟踪更多身体移动

The bottleneck is actually not bandwidth because avatar-based communication is cheaper from a bandwidth standpoint than video.

瓶颈其实不是宽带 因为从宽带角度来说 以阿凡达为基础的交流其实比视频还便宜

The reason is, if you’re doing an avatar-based communication all the 3D models for the avatars are stored locally on each machine.

原因是 如果你在做以阿凡达为基础的交流 那么阿凡达所有的3D模型都储存在本地的每一台机器上

What travels over the network is the tracking data.

在网络上的传播的是跟踪数据

So locally a camera detects that I smiled and then it sends over network a packet that says smile at 22 percent.

所以本地的相机发现我笑了 它会把这个通过网络传送给数据包 告诉它要22度微笑

And then on the other computer it then draws that smile.

然后在另一台电脑上 它才会做出这个笑脸

So you’re not sending visual information over the network.

所以你并不是在通过网络传送视觉信息

What you’re sending is very cheap information which is semantic information about movement.

你传送的是一个很便宜的信息 它的语义信息就是移动

The bottleneck is we can’t track movements that accurately.

瓶颈是我们无法如此准确地追踪移动

So if you think of the commercial systems right now they track what we call 18 degrees of freedom.

如果你现在想想商业体系 他们追踪的是我们所说的18度自由

Your head and both hands. You can do rotation which has three and X, Y and Z which is obviously three.

你的头和两只手 你可以旋转 有三种 还有X Y Z 也是三种

And so you’ve got 18 points, two hands and a head.

所以你有18个点 两只手和一个头

In order to have a conversation flow we need to have subtle cheek movements and the twitch of my elbow.

为了让对话流畅进行 我们需要有轻微的脸部移动和肘部扭动

Everything I do communicates meaning whether I’m doing it intentionally or not.

不管我是有意无意 我所做的每件事都会传达意义

And the theory that drives this understanding of how humans interact verbally and nonverbally is called interactional synchrony,

促进人们理解人类口头和非口头相互作用的理论叫做互动同步

and psychologists have been studying this for decades, since the 1960s.

心理学家从20世纪60年代就开始研究这个东西 已经几十年了

And the idea is that conversation, it’s a very—it’s an intricate dance and when we’re in a room with people everything is so tightly choreographed.

现在的想法是对话 它是非常 它是很复杂的舞蹈 当我们跟别人在一个房间里的时候 一切都是精心安排的

When you nod your head I change my intonation.

你点一下头 我改变自己的语调

And when she moves her elbow my knee bobs.

她移动一下胳膊肘 我的膝盖晃动一下

And there’s all of these pairwise movements and that’s what makes a conversation feel special face to face.

有很多成对的动作在同时发生 这是这样才让面对面的对话变得很特别

We have to track all the movements of the people in the room in a way that’s sufficient to get that synchrony across.

我们必须得追踪房间里所有人的所有动作 才能达到一种同步性