LAS VEGAS — Along with all the incremental improvements of existing tech-related staples (audio equipment, cars, etc.) as well as cutting-edge tech (wearables and drones) showcased at CES, we witnessed a major shift: Virtual reality matured into a serious category.

It's not that the show floor was laden with VR technology, but the ones that did show up were no longer promising a far off future of virtual worlds — instead, they displayed technology that is just about ready to hit the market. There was even a special augmented reality pavilion at the conference, where a number of AR startups showed off their wares to attendees.

Based on a simple eye test of the crowd this week, the public is very excited about our virtual future. But what is the secret sauce that will propel virtual reality from the periphery to the main stage? This week, we discovered what may very well be the answer.

See also: Razer headset plus Leap Motion equals new virtual reality powers

First, a little background.

The first and only view anyone had of the latest Oculus Rift prototype, dubbed Oculus Crescent Bay, was at last year's Oculus Connect conference in September. But only those in the developer community, and a select few gaming insiders, were afforded an up close look at the new hardware and software. But on Tuesday, myself, along with several other Mashable staff, were given a private tour of the new version of the Oculus Rift, and we were blown away.

Mashable's Tech Editor Pete Pachal experiencing the Oculus Crescent Bay prototype. Image: Mashable, Christina Ascani

Situated in a black padded room designed to mute outside sounds, the company fired up the system and plunged us into several different worlds, each more stunning than the last. To get a blow-by-blow break down of most of the new worlds and how they look, check out our earlier peek at the system, which took place just after the Oculus conference.

But there's more.

Aside from the amazing skyscraper vistas, alien encounters, dinosaur attacks and and Sci-Fi carnival mirror imagery, included in this demonstration was a special scene created by Epic Games, the same people behind the hyper-real worlds of Gears of War.

Hands down, this scene, the last of the new demo series, was the stunner and the one most likely to finally sway any remaining doubters regarding the potential of VR. The best way to describe this scene is to reference the now iconic "bullet time" scene from The Matrix.

In Epic's scene you're dropped in the middle of a team of paramilitary police officers engaged in battle with a giant robot on a city street that could be New York City.

The entire sequence is delivered in slow motion, which is good, because the three-dimensional scene is so realistic that if it were played any faster it might be too much for those who are easily rattled by having giant bullets fired at them. Virtual peril aside, never has being the target of robotic projectiles looked so damn beautiful. At one point during the sequence, a police officer crouches next to you and his body shape is so realistic and his proximity so position-accurate in relation to your own that you find yourself reaching out to touch him.

Similarly, as the bullets flow toward you, it's difficult to resist placing yourself in the path of one just to make sure that they aren't real. Of course, nothing happens when you put yourself in the path of the bullets, but the virtual depth and responsiveness to your own movements is so accurate that the only thing missing from the experience is feeling the wind of the object whooshing past your face, or, ideally, feeling one of the projectiles graze one of your hands.

In fact, those imagined touch sensations are, quite simply, the only thing really missing from the best virtual reality experience we've seen yet. If Oculus has shown us the ultimate visual display of virtual reality, then touch is the holy grail that will finally move virtual reality from novelty tech to mainstream must-have.

When I asked the Oculus representative about that possibility, he acknowledged that touch will be the most important next step in boosting the realism of the experience, but wouldn't comment on whether the company has anything definitely coming in the near future that might address this missing piece. Nevertheless, the very fact that Oculus is thinking so much about this indicates that touch — likely in the form of haptic feedback gloves — will soon become a standard part of any serious virtual reality system.

At one point I asked the Oculus rep what he thought about the mysterious startup known as Magic Leap, which, by some accounts, may deliver one of the best augmented reality meets virtual reality experiences we've ever seen. All I got was a knowing smirk and acknowledgement that Oculus is well aware of the excitement around the company, which, even though vague, seemed to further bolster the claims that Magic Leap may be about to introduce something game changing.

Still, in all the accounts from people who have seen Magic Leap in action, no one has mentioned touch. So no matter how amazing it turns out to be, the company is likely to be in the same boat as other virtual reality contenders.

Another hint at just how important touch is likely to become for virtual reality was revealed when I visited the Razer OSVR installation, where the team had cleverly jerry-rigged the Leap Motion gesture controller to work with their own VR headset to allow you to throw virtual ice balls.

The Razer OSVR virtual reality headset.

But, again, the thing missing was touch. Sure, feeling actual cold from the virtual ice ball might be a bit much, but imagine feeling the weight of the virtual orb in your hand as you prepare to throw it. Adding haptic feedback, resulting in the sensation of virtual weight to the object, would not only help your accuracy (assuming you already know how to throw a real ball), but it would also make the experience that much more satisfying.

Another, less VR-centric, example of the power of touch, is Apple's recent demonstration of the Apple Watch. The company showed off how you can virtually tap a friend wearing an Apple Watch through haptic feedback, a demonstration that put a fine point on how, ultimately, technology is, first and foremost, about connecting to one another in the most intimate ways.

That's why touch, paired with 3D, position-specific visuals, is the surest path toward making VR as common as the smartphone — when you can feel what you think you see, human connections and immersive experiences within virtual space will cross over into a new uncanny valley of the senses in which anything is possible and VR memories will often be misremembered as memories derived from situations in meatspace reality.

But we're not quite there yet.

So will the lack of a touch component be virtual reality's stumbling block before it ever even takes off? Based on what we've seen from the likes of the Oculus Crescent Bay prototype and Razer OSVR, that's not likely. But until that piece of the puzzle is figured out, the popularization of VR is almost certain to continue to move at a snail's pace as users gradually tell companies what the use-case sweet spot — VR gaming, immersive movies or virtual tourism — is for virtual reality systems.

When that happens, when someone gets VR touch right, the real world that was shrunk thanks to the Internet and smartphones, will suddenly get (virtually) a lot bigger.