As the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show rolls on in Las Vegas, a bunch of cool upcoming hardware is receiving fresh media coverage, and among the exhibitors is the Kickstarted crew from Oculus and thier hotly anticipated Virtual Reality head-mounted display, the Rift.

Back in November, Oculus announced a few months delay for delivery of Rift dev kits to Kickstarter backers, and revealed a new prototype that looked very different from the concept renders shown during the crowdfunding phase.

At CES 2013, tech publication The Verge have reportedly had some hands-on time with the device, and their hi-res photos offer a close-up look at what should resemble the final form-factor.

Dev kits of the Oculus Rift are still expected to start shipping from March 2013, aimed at drumming up game developer support ahead of a more feature-packed consumer-tailored version down the track.

There'll no doubt be a lot more coverage of hands-on impressions over the next few days, so keep an eye on the tech sites for fresh impressions of the hopeful display hardware.

May need to change your image URL Dan.

http://www.qgl.org/XXXLINKURLTOFULLSIZESOURCEIMAGE

I'm also spewing I missed CES - I was in Vegas for NYE and saw the setup for this - it's absolutely insane.

Joe, a vest is different from this, imo.

This will be a high def 3d screen with head tracking, so it will be far more immersive and less of a gimmick.

Assuming it lives up to the hype, that is.

If it DOES, however, I can bet I'll be playing every game that can use it with it. That's the biggest limiting factor to its success, at the moment.

Its entirly dependant on how good it works ... the wieght factor will, to some extent, be mitigated if it can provide what it promises considering the effects of true immersion.

I'm getting one.

Taipan, my desk chair is currently broken, it leans too far back. If these are heavy, they'd probably equalise out the pull on my head and make it neutral :P

People whine about having to wear super-light glasses to play in 3D or watch 3D movies now... But add some motion tracking and all of a sudden they're ok with strapping a brick to their head? Curious. I'm totally down for it by the way!

I'm sure if they start selling the tech will improve and other companies might jump on the bandwagon aswell.

Michael Abrash doesn't seem to think VR or AR will live up to the hype without an extraordinary leap in the current hardware technology. The prototype was reported to suffer from significant lag that they were trying to rectify in time for the dev kit release. Oculus is the latest company to try to slay the latency dragon, hopefully they'll succeed but yeah don't hold your breath.

John Carmack hax0red the firm warez. It's gonna be sick.