When we saw the Oculus Rift Crystal Cove headset at CES we were blown away. It was incredible. And now there's good news: you can pre-order your own for $350 today. It's not the final product but it's still fantastic.
Just like the version we saw at CES, the Oculus Rift Dev Kit 2 offers up a couple of main improvements over its previous version. The resolution is higher (1080p when you account for both eyes), there's head-tracking for increased immersion (head-watching camera included), and new display technologies help eliminate the smear-y image effects that make a lot of people feel motion sick. You can hop over to Kotaku for their first hand impressions of the finished Dev Kit at GDC.
The new Oculus Rift prototype is definitely still great, and it's even better that this awesome thing is now available to developers and also the general public who have $350 to drop. The bad news is that this means the comsumer version is probably still a ways away. As always, the guys at Oculus aren't saying much about when it's coming, but just that it will be even better. Given the previous track record it's easy to believe that, but it's really hard to wait. [Kotaku]