Crescent Bay is Oculus' newest version of the Rift hardware, and one step closer to retail

Oculus has announced a new version of the Oculus Rift headset, aimed at developers who will use it to finish their games getting ready for the consumer version. The latest prototype is called Crescent Bay.

It features 360-degree tracking, a higher-resolution display, lower latency and a built-in audio solution. The weight has been lowered, with improved ergonomics, and the model includes optional integrated audio; the audio will deliver what you would expect to hear from 3D space.

Oculus licensed technology developed at the University of Maryland from RealSpace3D to make this possible. "We're working on audio as aggressively as we're working on the vision side," Oculus' Brendan Iribe stated during the announcement.

Crescent Bay delivers enough upgrades and improvements to achieve presence, the feeling that you're actually inside the game and not in real life, according to Oculus VR. We'll be using the hardware later today, and will share our impressions. It's reported to be as big of a leap from the development kit 2 as the DK2 was from the original development kit.