Oculus Crescent Bay 
New updates include a higher-resolution screen, 360-degree motion tracking, and semi-integrated headphones 
Oculus has officially announced a brand-new prototype within its virtual reality headset family. Officially unveiled at today's Oculus Connect conference, the new headset is dubbed "Crescent Bay."


Those who haven't gotten a chance to play around with the first or second iterations of Oculus' virtual reality development kits might not appreciate this fact, but those who have certainly will: First off, the new Crescent Bay prototype is "much lighter. Thank god," as described by Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe.
"None of this is perfect yet, but it's much, much better," Iribe said in his presentation at the Oculus Connect conference today, as reported by VentureBeat. "It's in a state that we are prepared to show you today."
New LEDs integrated into the headset's rear add 360-degree tracking to the device. And the Crescent Bay comes with stronger optics, too: a higher refresh rate for its screen, as well as a greater resolution. Or, as Iribe puts it, the technological leap between the Oculus Rift DK2 headset and Crescent Bay is as great as the leap between the DK1 version of the headset and DK2.
Also, for the very first time in the Oculus Rift's development, the new Crescent Bay headset adds integrated audio into the mix. Well, half-integrated—the built-in headphones (designed to supplement a person's virtual reality experience with immersive, positional 3D audio) can be removed for those who prefer their own headsets instead. To Oculus, having the right 3D audio effect is as important as its headsets' visual effects.
"The progress we have made is incredible," Iribe said, of Crescent Bay in general. "I cannot wait to see what we accomplish over the next few decades."
As for when you might be able to get your hands on Crescent Bay, it's doubtful that Oculus will ship out Crescent Bay to developers. This isn't the consumer-grade iteration of the headset that the company envisions, nor is it an official development kit version of the headset. It's a feature prototype, much like the pre-DK2 Crystal Cove prototype was before it.
"This is still incredibly early hardware. There are plenty of technical challenges left to solve for the consumer Rift, but Crescent Bay is truly the best virtual reality headsets we've ever built," reads a description from Oculus.