Close your eyes and think of virtual reality and you probably picture something like this: a man wearing a wrap­around headset(耳机) and data gloves, wired into a powerful workstation or supercomputer. What distinguishes VR from an ordinary computer experience is the nature of the input and output. Where an ordinary computer uses things like a keyboard, mouse, or speech recognition for input, VR uses sensors that detect how your body is moving. And where a PC displays output on a screen, VR uses two screens (one for each eye), surround­sound speakers, and maybe some forms of touch and body feedback as well.

　　VR has been routinely used by scientists, doctors, dentists, engineers, architects, archaeologists, and the military for about the last 30 years. Difficult and dangerous jobs are hard to train for. How can you safely practice taking a trip to space, making a parachute jump, or carrying out brain surgery? All these things are obvious candidates for virtual reality applications.

　　Like any technology, virtual reality has both good and bad points. Critics always raise the risk that people may be addicted to alternative realities to the point of ignoring their real­world lives-but that criticism has been leveled at everything from radio and TV to computer games and the Internet. Like many technologies, VR takes little or nothing away from the real world: you don't have to use it if you don't want to.

　　语篇导读　本文主要介绍了虚拟现实技术(VR)的相关信息以及人们对这一技术的看法。

　　5．What equipment do we probably need for virtual reality?

　　A．A keyboard, a headset and a supercomputer.

　　B．A headset, data gloves and a supercomputer.

　　C．A headset, data gloves and a speech recognition.

　　D．A keyboard, a mouse and a speech recognition.

　　解析 B　细节理解题。根据第二段第一句可知，虚拟现实需要耳机、数据手套，以及强大的工作站或超级计算机，故选B项。

　　6．What is Paragraph 3 mainly about?

　　A．The advantages of virtual reality.

　　B．The influences of virtual reality.

　　C．The importance of virtual reality.

　　D．The applications of virtual reality.

解析 D　主旨大意题。第三段第一句讲到当前应用VR的领域，后面讲到VR在将来可能应用的领域，由此可知，第三段主要讲VR的应用，故选D项。