LAS VEGAS — After testing a prototype version of the Oculus Rift virtual reality device we came away impressed, intrigued and a little disoriented.

It feels like a long time since we’ve seen a decent virtual reality rig at CES. This is my third year covering the show, and before today I’d never seen anything that made me pine for the virtual worlds I dreamed of as a nerdy kid reading “Neuromancer.” That changed after I seized an opportunity to test out a prototype version of the developer kit for the Oculus Rift and finally had the VR experience I’ve been fantasizing about for years.

If the name sounds familiar, it’s because Oculus Rift was a popular Kickstarter project that successfully hit its crowd-funding goals in August. The Oculus VR team brought a prototype version of the developer kit to CES, and as much as I want to dislike the notion of VR games (remember Virtual Boy?) this headset does an amazing job of making you feel immersed in a virtual world.

As great as our experience was, there’s no guarantee the finished product that hits store shelves will have the same hardware, work the same way or even look like what we’re seeing at CES. Trying to talk about hard details like price, release date, or even hardware specs is tricky when you’re chatting up the Oculus VR team because the headset is still being tweaked and improved; you get the impression that if they had their way, the Oculus Rift would never stop evolving.

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