Virtual reality giant Oculus has announced a brand new controller for the Rift that is intended to be the final piece of the puzzle in the quest to make the VR headset completely immersive for gaming.

Dubbed Half Moon – a working title – the controller takes the form of two semi-circular units that sit over the fingers in the palm of the wearer’s hands.

“We wanted to create an input device that actually lets people reach out and touch the virtual world,” said Palmer Luckey, Oculus founder, at the company’s press conference today.

“Oculus Touch is what’s going to take VR gaming to the next level. We wanted to deliver hand presence, a sense of feeling to your own hands. This is critical to feeling overall presence.”

Half Moon features the traditional range of buttons, as well as a trigger finger input, and is designed to recreate natural gestures and the sense of touch in the virtual world.

“Each of these Half Moon controllers has what we call the hand trigger,” said Luckey.

“You need to be able to pick up a gun from a table and fire it, then throw down it effortlessly. Imagine pointing, waving and giving a thumbs up.”

However, while Half Moon is set to be a controller for the Rift in the future, when it launches early next year, every Rift will come bundled with a wireless Xbox controller.

“We see VR input evolving over the coming years, and there will be different inputs for different types of games,” said Luckey. “The Xbox controller is the key part of the current virtual reality puzzle.”

In fact, Microsoft seems to be throwing its full support behind the Rift, with the promise of native compatibility with Windows 10, along with the ability to play a number of Xbox One titles.

“The Rift will natively work with Windows 10 to make it easy to set up, jump in and have incredible VR experiences from day one,” said head of Xbox Phil Spencer.

He added that the Xbox One streaming capabilities would allow users to play triple-A games including Halo, Forza and Sunset Overdrive on the Rift.

The consumer version of the Rift will also come with a number of other features not previously seen on developer versions.

In the box will be a discreet external sensor that is designed to sit on a desk and track the Rift wearer’s head movements using the headset’s improved constellation tracking.

“You plug it into your computer and you’re all set,” said Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe.

The headset will also come with removable headphones that supply direction-based sound to the wearer as they play.

“It couldn’t just be visual, it also had to be audio,” said Iribe. “Audio is incredibly important to presence.”

Combine this with the improved visuals, and you have a headset that the company truly believes is going to bring gaming to a level it has never been before.

“For the first time we will be finally be inside of the game,” said Iribe.

Iribe did acknowledge that the graphical capabilities of the Rift – thanks to its two screens – mean it cannot match the highest quality monitor-based games on graphics.

“Maybe not as high resolution as one day, but this is the beginning,” he said.

However, he argued that the immersive nature of the system would nevertheless make it an experienced unparalelled by other gaming mediums.

“You’re going to be reminding your brain that this is not real,” he said.

“Gamers have been dreaming about this for decades. This is the beginning of virtual reality gaming.”