Oculus Rift Shown off in San Francisco, Coming Q1 2016

The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset is officially ready to go and headed our way, scheduled to hit shelves Q1 of 2016. We don’t have a price as of yet, but we still have over six months until release.

The Oculus developers took the stage in San Francisco today to talk about how far the product has come and how much it now feels like a finished consumer product with higher quality plastics and fabrics. You can now wear it with glasses, which is definitely an important new feature. It comes with detachable headphones that mount onto its adjustable side rails.

The headset is wired, which will probably upset some people, but the developers recommend that you should be seated anyway. There will be a slider that lets you adjust the distance between the lenses, so you can fine tune the headset to your liking. The headset is even further customizable, allowing you to remove the stock lenses and replace them with something that fits better.

The Oculus Rift will actually come with an Xbox One gamepad and a wireless adapter to connect it your PC. While that may seem a little lackluster compared to the headset, I think it will actually provide a familiar link that will help you adjust to a new type of gaming. You’ll actually be able to stream certain Xbox One games to the Rift, but they won’t be VR-capable.

If you are disappointed with the idea of using an Xbox One controller, know that the team at Oculus is developing their own motion controller called the Oculus Touch. It’s actually a pair of wireless controllers and each wraps around your hand and features an analog stick, two triggers, and two face buttons. The Rift can track the controllers in a virtual environment and they’ll even recognize hand gestures.

The interface that you’re met with when you strap on the headset features a store, friends list, and various status indicators. Once of those indicators is for battery life, and while that could be taken to mean that they’ll eventually release a wireless headset, Nate Mitchell of Oculus said that it could refer to a laptop that the headset is plugged into.

Finally, the crowd was shown a list of developers working on games for the Oculus Rift, and among those developers were heavy hitters like Square Enix, Harmonix, and Insomniac. Plus, Oculus will contribute $10 million to indie developers interested in developing for the headset.

Next week is E3 and the Rift will be available to play, so look forward to impressions from attendees!