We thought we’d share a short and sweet Oculus update to help kick off the weekend.

Shipping Update

Since our last update (May 1st), we’ve shipped roughly 2,500 dev kits, bringing the total number of dev kits in the wild to just over 6,000. We’re on track to ship the remaining 1,500 Kickstarter kits before the end of May.

Palmer, Nate, Michael and Brendan signing Rift dev kits for backers.

To everyone who’s still waiting for their Rift: Thank you for your patience! We’re almost there.

To everyone who’s already received their Rift: Thank you for your patience! We hope you’re enjoying it.

If you’re developing samples, demos or full ‘Made for VR’ games, please share them with the community on the Oculus Forums.

Replacement Rewards

The replacement rewards for Kickstarter development kits are available now via the Oculus Order Manager. If you’re eligible for a replacement reward, just login to the Oculus Order Manager and click the “Claim Code” button.

If you claim your Oculus Store Credit code today, it can be applied to purchases in the Oculus Store (including the upcoming Latency Tester) starting June 1.

Oculus SDK Update – v0.2.2

We just released Oculus SDK v0.2.2 on the Oculus Developer Center. Highlights of the release include:

– Added magnetometer drift correction support to Unity integration.

– The Unity sample’s HUD is now rendered in 3D with proper distortion.

– Added gamepad support and OculusWorldTiny sample on Mac OSX.

If you’re interested, you can read the full build notes for the release here.

Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Meet Up

The Silicon Valley Virtual Reality (SVVR) meet up held their first meeting last night, featuring organizers Karl Krantz, Cymatic Bruce, and the Sixense team. We snuck in to join the crowd of over 60 VR enthusiasts at the Computer History Museum in San Jose (which includes one of Ivan Sutherland’s original experimental 3D headsets from 1968) to check out a few of the community’s latest projects.

Photo by MarinoAlperon from www.reddit.com/r/oculus

It was awesome to see developers sharing their demos (and their Rift dev kits), discussing their work, and providing feedback to one another. A huge thank you to Karl and Bruce for organizing the event. We look forward to hearing about other meet ups around the world!

Half Life 2 (VR Beta) Officially in the Rift

Joe Ludwig dropped into the Oculus Forum to share the news — Valve has officially released beta Oculus support for their groundbreaking classic, Half Life 2 (including Episode 1, Episode 2 and OSX support)!

Just like Team Fortress 2, this port is intended as a testbed for Valve’s future VR projects. Joe mentioned that it’s “…a bit more raw than TF2,” but we’ve been having a blast playing it around the office.

If you’ve never played Half Life 2, or maybe it’s just been awhile since your last go, now’s your chance to step inside Ravenholm like never before. It’s pretty incredible to have Dr. Gordon Freeman’s story, arguably one of the best interactive experiences ever made, as a VR developer showcase. We can’t thank the team at Valve enough (again).

We have more good news queued up for next week, so stay tuned!

— Palmer and the Oculus Team