在日本環球影城的媒體預演會上，一名車手戴著增強現實主題的護目鏡乘坐“馬里奧賽車”。(菲利普·方/法新社，蓋蒂圖片社)A rider wears themed augmented reality goggles on the “Mario Kart” ride during a media preview of the theme park at Universal Studios Japan in Osaka.(Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images）在迪士尼樂園和日本環球影城，增強現實和視頻游戲技術項目表明，元宇宙將不限于虛擬現實眼鏡。那實體世界和數字世界如何融合呢？到目前為止，增強現實技術的前景在很大程度上只是承諾通過我們手機應用程序的濾鏡或簡單的游戲，在相機、屏幕上很少做移動的角色。但是，如果整個元宇宙是一個一個持久的、不斷發展的在線世界概念，那我們還需要做更多東西。
The promise of augmented reality so far has largely been just that — promises of a future seen through filters for our mobile phone apps or simple games that place characters with little movement on our camera screens. But if this whole metaverse thing — the concept of a persistent, evolving online world that we don’t log into as much as live inside — is ever going to take off, we’re going to need more. Our theme parks, which increasingly are centered on the concepts of games and play, may offer a glimpse of where the future is heading.In the not too distant future Universal Studios Hollywood will import a “Mario Kart"-themed ride from Japan that is centered on augmented reality, an attraction designed to create the illusion that we’re interacting with virtual objects and characters. Unlike most AR-enhanced mobile phone apps, where the images are tailored to an individual’s screen, the use of visor-like glasses will allow all guests on the ride to engage with the digital creations in real-time.
本月早些時候，華特迪士尼公司(Walt Disney Co.)悄悄宣布正在與位于加州紅杉城(Redwood City)的增強現實公司Illumix進行“對話”。這家公司在游戲(《弗雷迪的增強現實五夜:特快專遞》(Five Nights at Freddy’s AR: Special Delivery)和電子商務領域有深厚的根基，正在迅速向實體領域擴張。Illumix科技提供了一系列的體驗，包括融合了實體和數字效果的娛樂，以及更個人化的角色互動。
And earlier this month the Walt Disney Co. quietly announced that it is “in conversations” with Illumi, a Redwood City, Calif.-based AR firm that has been rooted in games (“Five Nights at Freddy’s AR: Special Delivery”) and e-commerce but is quickly expanding into physical realms. Illumix tech offers a range of experiences, including entertainment that merges physical and digital effects as well as more personally grounded character interactions. One of the demos previewed by Illumix as part of the experimental tech program Disney Accelerator just happened to show some over-the-top, vintage cartoon-inspired interactions in Mickey’s Toontown, an area of Disneyland that the company would later announce would be reimagined with more green space and a number of interactive, play-focused activities.These were tech demos and shouldn’t be viewed as guarantees that any will show up in the park, but the proof-of-concept projects signal that an augmented reality-enhanced future is getting closer. Among the tantalizing scenes shown: an animated overlay in the Toontown area of the park with cartoon explosions intermingled with real-world smoke, a glimpse of Buzz Lightyear soaring around and through Disney California Adventure, and Minnie Mouse hanging out on a Main Street, U.S.A., balcony to offer birthday greetings to a young fan.
What impressed most about Illumix’s demos was the way in which the augmented reality characters appear to move with and understand their surroundings rather than appear like virtual stickers. Illumix founder Kirin Sinha says she has to be delicate in discussing her company’s potential collaborations with Disney, but she ultimately sees the gaming world continuing to influence physical spaces. “It’s this idea that it’s constantly evolving — based on other people, your preferences, choices you made in the past, virtual events. We can take what’s happening in the digital content world and bring that to physical experiences,” Sinha says.It’s easy to imagine augmented reality providing digital overlays of lands and for the park to better respond to birthdays and anniversaries. Or, for a theme park history buff like myself, a way for the phone to provide location-based historical knowledge with corresponding historical image overlays.
Illumix創始人麒麟·辛哈展示了該公司的增強現實技術如何應用于迪士尼主題公園。在這里，一個玩具巴斯光年(Buzz Lightyear)可以進入和環繞加州迪士尼冒險樂園(Disney California Adventure)，所有使用智能手機觀看內容的游客都可以看到它。這是迪士尼加速器實驗項目的演示，不它是否會真的出現在公園里。(迪斯尼Illumix)
Illumix founder Kirin Sinha shows how the company’s augmented reality technology could be used in a Disney theme park. Here, a toy Buzz Lightyear zips in and around Disney California Adventure and could be visible to all guests utilizing smartphones to view the content. This was a demo from Disney’s experimental tech program Accelerator and it is unknown if it will appear in the parks.(Disney Illumix)Theme parks, of course, offer perhaps the easiest way to understand the concept of the metaverse, which is often spoken of as an all-encompassing and persistent virtual world where we shop, play, work, communicate and watch entertainment — the metaverse is a virtual theme park, if you will. Early examples, such as Epic Games’ “Fortnite” or the content creation game universe “Roblox,” are, like “Second Life” before them, rooted in the video game space. Meta, the newly rebranded Facebook, has focused its conversations on virtual reality or productivity tools such as virtual meetings.一覺醒來，我們就會進入一個虛擬世界，進行所有日常互動，這種想法有點反烏托邦，可能很遙遠，可能永遠不會成為現實，除非氣候變化迫使它成為現實。更有可能的是，它類似于迪士尼樂園的模式，娛樂、技術、建筑等融合在一起，模糊了技術界限。
But the concept that we’ll wake up and plug into a virtual world for all of our daily interactions is a bit dystopian, likely far off and will probably never be a reality unless climate change forces it to be. More likely it is something akin to the Disneyland model, where entertainment, technology, architecture and more come together in spaces that blur technological lines.“There’s the ‘Ready Player One’ version of a metaverse, where we all live and work and our lives are totally digital. I don’t think that’s ultimately where this is going, to a point where we’re not in this physical world,” says Sinha. “I don’t think there’s any evidence to suggest that people actually like doing that.”Guests on a “Mario Kart"-inspired ride at Universal Studios Japan, which utilizes augmented reality techniques.(Universal Studios Japan)“However,” she continues, “if you look at the companies that are excelling in the metaverse, of course they would want to frame the metaverse as a future where everyone is going to live their entire lives in that company’s world. That’s the story you’re going to go out and pitch, but the reality, if you zoom back, is that the metaverse is about taking the separation of the physical and digital and combining them.”
Disney of late has been talking of building its own metaverse, and that is represented in how the worlds of “Star Wars” influenced a theme park land, which in turn influenced a virtual reality game. Film and television are merging into a singular world that’s represented in a theme park and interactive entertainment such as games. Disney has even teased what appear to be augmented reality glasses that can up the educational content in a park such as Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom.
