Google's science-fiction-like virtual reality glasses will start shipping next year with a price tag of $1,500 -- but most buyers won't be able to get their hands on a pair just yet.

The under-development glasses, a stealth project hatched in the company's mysterious Google X lab, are still buggy, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said Wednesday at Google's I/O developer conference. Google also faces regulatory hurdles that prevent the glasses from being shipped anywhere but the United States.

So for now, only U.S.-based attendees of this week's I/O developers conference will be eligible to buy the "Google Glass Explorer Edition." Those who want the glasses can pre-order today and will get the gadget early next year.

Google made the glasses a focal point of I/O's opening day keynote.

A parachute team jumped out of a blimp wearing the glasses, then turned the spotlight over to a group of glasses-equipped BMX bikers who tore across the roof of San Francisco's Moscone Center. A rapeller finished the demo by scaling down the walls of the conference center.

The whole time, a livestream broadcast their point-of-view to attendees in the conference hall and on a Google+ hangout.

"This is pretty wild," Google cofounder Sergey Brin, wearing his own pair of Google glasses, told the standing-room-only crowd. "I've never seen that perspective before."

He later added: "I'm so glad all that worked. I wasn't really expecting it to."

The small "Project Glass" team explained how the project evolved over the past three years from a bunch of wires and computers connected to giant ski goggles to a slimmed-down form factor that weighs less than most sunglasses.

The glasses contain a powerful processor, multiple microphones, a small speaker, a camera, a number of wireless radios and a number of sensors, including gyroscopes that make the glasses "aware" of their location in the broader physical world.

But Brin and his team didn't show the crowd much of what the glasses are supposedly capable of. Though the first-person perspective was unique, even Brin admitted that it was "only part of what a computer can do."

If the glasses aren't ready to be sold, why go through such a spectacle to demonstrate them?

Brin said the crowd of developers gathered at I/O is among "the smartest and most creative in world," and the Project Glass team wants their input.

"You can help us think about new possibilities," Brin said. "We're a pretty small team, so there's only so much time to try various kinds of functionalities."

【新聞快訊】

谷歌在今日召開的Google IO大會上展示了其未來主義的、可連網(wǎng)的谷歌眼鏡Google Glass。這款眼鏡也被稱為（Project Glass）的售價為1500美元，只面向今天參加了Google IO大會的開發(fā)員出售。開發(fā)員可以在大會期間預訂Google Glass explorer edition（谷歌眼鏡探索者版本），交貨時間為明年初。

谷歌聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人希爾蓋-布林（Sergey Brin）在大會上展示了谷歌眼鏡，通過會場大屏幕，現(xiàn)場觀眾看到他借助谷歌眼鏡與一家直升飛機上的朋友進行視頻通話。隨后機上人員從飛機上跳傘降落，機上人員也戴著谷歌眼睛。布林和現(xiàn)場觀眾一道從眼睛的實時視角看到了跳傘人員下墜以及降落傘打開的全過程。

在降落在一個建筑物屋頂之后，機上人員將一個小包裹交給了下一組人員，而后通過繩索下落到地面，再轉交給騎自信車的最后一組傳遞人員。這時候布林宣布，這座建筑物就是大會會場Moscone West，而騎車人員馬上就會進入會場。全程頓時響起掌聲和歡呼聲。

但布林同時表示：“我們是一個非常小的團隊，我們只有有限的時間嘗試不同的功能。”因此，谷歌眼睛還需要時間來進行更多的完善。

谷歌眼鏡的右側有一個小顯示屏和一個攝像頭，右側鏡腳帶有觸控板，右手輕觸鏡腳就可以拍攝照片和視頻。顯示屏上可以顯示短信、郵件、照片、Google+信息以及天氣等各種功能。谷歌眼鏡可以將用戶目的地所在的方向或好友發(fā)來的短信息顯示在用戶眼前。用戶可以通過視頻聊天與好友對話，還可以在四處走動時拍照甚至上網(wǎng)購物。