Crescent Bay

Attendees at the Oculus Connect developer conference this weekend got a glimpse of the future of the company’s virtual reality headgear, and it looks to be another leap forward for Oculus.

The “Crescent Bay” prototype sports a number of improvements over the company’s current Development Kit 2 headset, including a higher resolution screen, improved optics and a new set of integrated headphones that allow the system to bring sound to wearers.

Crescent-Bay-Front-Pers-on-LightIn addition to all that, the prototype is also covered in dots that can be used to provide 360 degree head tracking, as well as track a user through a physical space, which is what Oculus used for several “experience” demos at the conference. Attendees were able to test out scenarios like standing in the engine room of a virtual submarine, and watching a Tyrannosaurus Rex lumber by.

The experiences were designed and built by a team in the company’s Seattle offices, which opened earlier this year.

Early reports from people who were able to test out the experiences were overwhelmingly positive, saying that they felt the new demos were a marked improvement over Oculus’s current shipping hardware. It’s a good sign for the company, which is working to create a consumer-ready version of its VR hardware, especially now that it’s racing Sony’s Project Morpheus to market.

Of course, there’s still a looming question: how does Crescent Bay work with games? While reports of the demo seemed to prove its efficacy with “experiences,” the average person may not have the ability to set up a space that’s tailored to work with those new forms of entertainment.

One thing is clear about the future of VR, though: the Seattle area is going to play a key role in its development. There are a number of major players in the area, including Oculus, Valve, Atomic VR and Technical Illusions, all vying to be a key part of this new technology.

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