We’re still quite a few months off from a consumer version of the Oculus Rift but in the meantime we can feast our eyes on the latest prototype that the company has unveiled a couple of days back. The last prototype was called Crystal Cove and it was shown off at the Consumer Electronics Show 2014 back in January. The latest prototype is called Crescent Bay and Oculus showed it off at the Oculus Connect developer conference.
Pointing towards the first two versions of the Rift development kit Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe said about Crescent Bay that “It’s as big of a leap as we made from DK1 to DK2.”
The latest prototype supports 360-degree head tracking made possible by the Rift’s external camera which can track the back of the headset, thus allowing users to move easily without having to feel restricted by having to stay within the camera range. Iribe said that its “much lighter,” an improvement that people will certainly appreciate. Crescent Bay has integrated headphones with support for 3D audio, a first for any Rift prototype.
Oculus, owned by Facebook, first started shipping development kits last year. The CEO said that so far over 100,000 kits have been shipped in 130 countries around the world. Plans for the release of a consumer version have not been detailed as yet so for all those who can’t get a developer kit there’s a fair bit of waiting involved.
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