The final Oculus Rift developer kit ships this month

Virtual reality company Oculus has started shipping the next version of its VR headset, the Oculus Rift Developer Kit 2, to buyers. The company plans to send out roughly 10,000 of the devices from its factories in July, with half of those units with customers by the end of the month. The DK2, which Oculus says more than 45,000 people have pre-ordered at a price of $350, is set to be the final development model before the Facebook-owned Oculus releases a full consumer version of its Rift headset.

The Oculus Rift DK2 has a few significant upgrades on its predecessor. Most noticeable is the step up in its display — where the first Rift developer kit displayed a painfully low 1280x800 screen resolution, the DK2 gives users a 1080p OLED panel. It also comes with a tracking camera that can transfer your real-world head movements into games to make the experience feel more natural, and offers supposed reductions in blurring and motion sickness that should mean users can play games for longer without taking breaks every few minutes to re-align themselves with reality or retch into a bucket.