Rejoice fellow VR pioneers: the day has finally arrived. Oculus Rift development kits are officially shipping! In fact, the very first kits have already started arriving.

We actually started shipping on Wednesday, but we haven’t shared tracking information yet because the team is still tied up at GDC in San Francisco. Sorry about that! This means the earliest backers may actually find Rift’s on their doorsteps before they receive tracking numbers. A little surprise to keep things interesting.

This day has been a long time in the making. We’d like to thank you again for your patience, support, and enthusiasm for virtual reality! We couldn’t have gotten here without you.

It’ll take time for us to ship 10,000+ development kits. Hold fast — they’re coming. When you do receive your Rift, let us know what you think @Oculus3d on Twitter!

Oculus Developer Center Now Open

With development kits on their way, it’s time to open up the Oculus Developer Center. You can dive in right now at https://developer.oculus.com.

You’ll find everything you need to start building VR content with your Rift development kit including the Oculus SDK, Unity and Unreal Engine integrations, samples, documentation, videos, the developer wiki, and community forums.

The dev center is the place for Oculus developers to come together and collaborate on virtual reality. There are plenty of tough problems to solve, which is why it’s so important for the community to come together to really bring virtual reality to life.

We wanted to empower the community to build the next generation of gaming. All of the source code for the core Oculus SDK is available under the Oculus License and full source for the samples is available under Apache 2.0! This also makes the Oculus SDK much easier to integrate, debug, port, and build on.

Go forth, developers, and seek out our virtual future.

Developer Showcases

Once your Rift arrives, we recommend that you download the Oculus SDK from the Developer Center, and try the World Demo, a simple Tuscany-esque environment we showed at SXSW.

After that, the possibilities are endless. Play Team Fortress 2’s “VR Mode” in the Rift. Experiment with world building in Unity and Unreal Engine. Share game prototypes with the community. Or, build a “Made for VR” game that defines a new genre.

The Rift lets you experience games in completely new ways. Whatever you decide, have fun.

Looking for a little inspiration on where to begin? The full recording of our SXSW panel, “Virtual Reality: The Holy Grail of Gaming” with Cliff Bleszinksi, Paul Bettner, Chris Roberts, and Palmer is online now:

Day Zero

We want to hear from you. Remember, the Rift, the SDK, and the Dev Center will be shaped by your feedback. If you have suggestions, please let us know!

This is just the beginning. Virtual reality, as a technology and as a medium, is still in its infancy. It will improve in all aspects, opening up even more ways to be immersed in virtual worlds. With virtual reality, the possibilities really are limitless.

Thank you for joining the revolution.

We’ll see you in the game!

– Palmer and the Oculus team