Oculus Rift's Crystal Cove shows off new low-latency screen and positional head tracking

The Oculus Rift has been making waves in PC gaming for a while, but mostly absent from the buzz has been the company behind Oculus, Oculus VR. Apparently they've been saving up all that excitement for this year's CES, where they unveiled a new prototype, the Crystal Cove. Our friends at Tested got to have a long hands-on with the new prototype, and I'm not even a tiny bit bitter or jealous about that. At all.

Crystal Cove makes two big advances over the developer-focused earlier prototype: a 1080p (probably) OLED screen and built-in six-degree motion tracking. First, here's what VP of Product Nate Mitchell says is great about the new OLED screen: “In a typical LCD [screen], it's between 15 and 35 milliseconds pixel switching time,” he said, referring to the time it takes a single pixel of the screen to change colors. “With OLED technology, we have a sub-millisecond pixel switching time, that means we can get all of that pixel switching latency sucked out.” It may sound like nothing, but lag between the movement of your head and the changing of what you're seeing is a major component for motion sickness.

A sharper screen that refreshes faster is half of the VR dream, and the other half is head and motion tracking. Dev-kit hackers have already been rigging the previous prototype with motion controls that supplement the existing sensors—in Crystal Cove, IR LEDs are read by a camera to use the full motion of your head. This means leaning around corners in shooters, ducking behind boxes or, interestingly, zooming closer to the ground during a real-time strategy overhead view.

Cory has been all over CES, and we've been seeing great stuff from the convention. Check out our full CES 2014 coverage here .

Thanks, Tested .

Latest in Strategy
Tzarina Katarin Bokha, the Ice Queen of Kislev
Total War: Warhammer 3 rolls out a cool Kislev overhaul, changes befitting Tzeench’s magic, new projectile units and creakier skeletal horses
Civilization 7 Great Britain - Modern Civ art (via YouTube)
As Civilization 7 struggles to keep up with Civ 5 player counts, a new patch is coming tomorrow with still more UI changes and gameplay tweaks
Battle Brothers
Nearly 2 years after its last update, the excellent Battle Brothers gets 'a bucket load of fixes' and free new content
King wielding his axe against would-be assassins in Norland.
Medieval colony sim Norland is getting a 'damn big update' that completely overhauls the game's mechanics: 'We're rolling out some radical changes to the core gameplay'
Age of Empires 2
Former Age of Empires 2 dev claims Microsoft demanded its first expansion should have a Korean faction, because 'StarCraft sold 3 million copies in Korea'
Endless Legend 2 Kin faction reveal
It's turtle time: Endless Legend 2's first faction is the fortification-loving Kin of Sheredyn
Latest in News
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway
Image of Cersei Lanniser from Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Steam early access trailer
A new Game of Thrones RPG is coming to Steam today with a cast of 'familiar faces,' which is good because it's really the only way to tell it's a GoT game at all
The new Prime Asset featured in the upcoming update for the Outlast Trials.
The Outlast Trials puts its already paranoid players under surveillance for a time-limited story event
A Viera looking confused in Final Fantasy 14.
Old armor continues to fall victim to Final Fantasy 14's bizarre two-channel dye system, unless you're super into changing the colour of teeny-tiny eyelets: 'Why even bother at this point?'
Starfield: Shattered Space
By the time Bethesda was on Starfield, you'd 'basically get in trouble' for breaking schedule, says former dev: 'A lot of the great stuff within Skyrim came from having the freedom to do what you want'
Otter AI Meeting Agent
As if your work meetings weren't already fun enough, now Otter has a new all-hearing AI agent that remembers everything anyone has said and can join in the discussion