The hotly anticipated Oculus Rift virtual reality head-mounted display isn't expected to start shipping to it's Kickstarter backing base until next month, but it appears a few VIP studios are already starting to receive their developer kit hardware, as evidenced by this photo of Mincreaft creator Markus "Notch" Persson, and Mojang co-founder Jakob Porsér modelling what we presume are products of the device's 40 unit manufacturing pilot round, mentioned in a recent blog update (via Reddit).

The image was reportedly tweeted by Porsér, then pulled once the studio realised they were still under non-disclosure until an unspecified embargo date, but not before the Reddit adept captured the moment for posterity. A pair of later tweets from Notch humourously confirmed as much:

If we ever received something like the Oculus Rift, we'd probably be stupid enough to tweet pics of it immediately, despite agreeing not to.

Of course, if that hypothetical situation arose, we'd apologize for it.

Notch has previously pledged support for the VR display in Mojangs upcoming sci-fi game 0x10c, and mentioned that they would also look at retrofitting support for Minecraft.

More Oculus Rift supporting titles are expected to be confirmed at the upcoming GDC 2013 event.