课程概述 / About This Course

欢迎来到关于VR(虚拟现实)与AR(增强现实)基础入门教学课程的第一章节。标题使用“基础入门”一词因为接下来的教学速度将比较快，内容的概括性与简略性也比较强，便于非专业读者理解与学习。

撰写这份教学材料的初衷其实非常实际。一年到头，总有VR/AR制作新手或者提供资金的管理层联系我，咨询关于昂贵的摄像头拼接，空间立体声，如何填满360度全景画面等专业知识的相关问题。但是，他们完全不在意自己不了解“无视差点”，”计算摄影学“，“相位差”，“双路立体声”等基本概念。不少试图进军VR/AR产业的人似乎完全不了解，也不在意，最根本的一些科学原理。这个现象的后果就是一些本可避免的失败或者创造力受到阻碍，因为当他们的作品还在萌芽期的时候，任何一个小小的失误都可能造成持久的影响。

作为上海纽约大学的访问教授，我在学校里开设了这个课程。接下来的几周里，我会发布和课堂同步的课件。它们也许不会非常完善，所以欢迎大家随时给我提供反馈！

Welcome to the weekly pieces on Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality “fundamentals”. They’re meant to be fast, brief, holistic, and accessible to non-engineers.

The motivation for creating the series is practical. I get calls from novice VR/AR producers and from check-writing executives worried about expensive camera stitching, or wanting awesome spatial sound, or feeling obliged to always fill the entire 360 degree view. But all too often they are unaware of zero-parallax points and computational photography, of phase differences and binaural audio, or of creative alternatives to full 360s from the arts community. It’s like, for VR and AR, no one knows, or apparently cares, what’s under the hood. The results are often avoidable disasters and thwarted creativity, not good for embryonic systems anywhere, where small changes can have lasting effects.

This is an easy one for me: I’m teaching it right now, as visiting faculty at NYU Shanghai. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be giving these presentations here and will post them in sync with the class. They’ll be a little scruffy and unfinished, which is fine. Your feedback is welcome!