Regular readers are probably tired of hearing us say that the latest hardware demonstration from Oculus is a new high-water mark in virtual reality that finally does away with a lot of the problems holding the technology back. To those readers, I apologize in advance: the new Crescent Bay prototype Oculus announced and showed off at its first-ever developer conference in Hollywood this weekend is a new high-water mark in virtual reality that finally does away with a lot of the problems holding the technology back.

I tried on the new device for two 10-minute demo sessions at the conference, each time going through the same set of 10 pre-made demo experiences. As soon as I put it on (or rather had it put on me; we were barely allowed to touch the fragile prototypes for fear of breaking them), I noticed a significant jump in comfort from previous Rift development kits and prototypes. Those old devices have all been akin to ski goggles, with thick elastic bands in the rear pressing the display box tightly around the eyes. It was a design decision that put a lot of pressure on some sensitive facial areas, and it left this user a sweaty, red-faced mess after every use.

The Crescent Bay prototype does away with this issue. Instead of an elastic band, there's now a rigid plastic support that goes over the ears and dips down to join at a thick, triangular rear support, which tucks around the nape of the neck and back of the skull. (The single threaded wire connecting the Rift to the computer now slides down the right side of this plastic support, which is much more comfortable than the over-the-middle-of-the-skull solution on previous dev kits.) This plastic band slides in and out of the main unit quite easily to adjust for differently sized heads, while a small velcro strip comes over the top of the skull for additional support.

The new design, which CEO Brendan Iribe told Ars was a direct outgrowth of the recent purchase of industrial design firm Carbon, doesn't form quite as perfect of a dark seal as other Rift prototypes—more light seemed to seep in from the bottom. I was more than happy to make that tradeoff, though, for a unit that I could see wearing comfortably for hours rather than minutes at a time.

Mysterious specs

Oculus says the Crescent Bay prototypes are much lighter than previous dev kits, but the company wouldn't go into specifics on the weight—or really any other specific specifications of the device, for that matter. Iribe told Ars that this silence was to avoid confusion among developers, who he said shouldn't target their efforts toward a prototype device that isn't necessarily indicative of where a consumer product will end up. "Nobody should be developing against that, because it's not the real thing yet," Iribe said. "They should be developing against DK2. When we actually announce that is the resolution we are going to ship, then they can develop against that..."

Still, we can guess at the specifications based on our experience. The display looked good enough to at least match the 1440p resolution of the Gear VR units being shown off in the next room. When held close to the face, this isn't quite a "retina" resolution with no distinguishable pixels; I could make out some slight color-warped moire patterns when trying to focus on a specific object up close. Still, it's a huge improvement over the 1080p screens on the DK2, with almost none of the readily apparent "screen door" effect caused by the black spaces between pixels. It was much easier to read small text on the Crescent Bay unit even at a virtual distance.

The refresh rate is harder to estimate just from eyeballing, but I wouldn't be shocked if this prototype reached the 90Hz target Oculus says is needed to provide a truly stable, flicker-free VR image for most people (up from 75Hz on the DK2). The environment just feels a little more solid on Crescent Bay, with none of the juttering or smearing seen on previous Rift units.

Combined with the increased resolution, it's much easier to suspend your disbelief and feel there's a virtual environment locked in place around your position. Iribe said multiple times over the weekend that this was the first Rift unit that solved the significant nausea problems he's had with VR since joining the company two years ago, and it's an easy claim to believe.

Walking and listening

While previous Oculus demonstrations have all involved sitting down in front of a computer, the Crescent Bay demo asked us to stand on a square, cushioned mat roughly three-to-four feet on a side. The attendant told us we could walk around anywhere on this mat and, surprisingly, move our head up and down anywhere from the floor to jumping up in the air. No matter how much I crouched, leapt, turned, or even sat during the demo, the head tracking never lost track of my position, thanks in part to new tracking LEDs on the back strap of the unit.

Iribe told Ars the head-tracking camera mounted about three feet away during that demo was the first one custom-built for Oculus. It has a much wider field of view than the one that comes with the DK2. In fact, almost all of the components in the prototype were customized for Oculus, Iribe said, providing much stronger integration than the off-the-shelf parts of older units.

The final key improvement in the Crescent Bay prototype is integrated audio, delivered through two small, optional, over-ear headphones that flip down from the side, like ear flaps on a winter hat. The audio quality was only modest, but building headphones into the unit removes the need for yet another wire between the user's head and the PC tower. This ends up being much more breathable and less sweat-inducing than separate, heavy-duty earcups.

A few of the demos we tried used these headphones to show off a new directional audio solution Oculus is working on with RealSpace3D. This feature was definitely still a work in progress, making the apparent position of environmental sounds jump around a bit as I moved my head. If I turned my head to the right while staring at a roaring T-Rex, for instance, it would sound as if it was in front of me, then abruptly cut to a sound balance dominated by the right headphone. In another demo, though, I was able to hear a fire burning in a toy-sized apartment building only when I physically leaned in and put my face right up to it, which was a pretty incredible trick.

Out of control

Notably, all the demos lacked any form of handheld control or the ability to see my actual limbs, and Oculus is still remaining silent about any developments on its own control solution. That doesn't mean there was no way to interact with the environment, though. One demo featured a grey and wrinkly alien whose gaze and posture changed as I walked around examining him. Another demo replaced my head with a disembodied ivory mask bobbing in front of a mirror, tracking my position and angle perfectly as I looked at "myself" from multiple angles.

Oculus seemed eager to show off the kinds of high-end VR graphics you can only get when tethered to a top-of-the-line PC (as opposed to, say, the wire-free mobile phone in the Gear VR headset down the hall). A scene set in a submarine was particularly detailed, as was a vertigo-inducing scene from the top of a steampunk skyscraper that could have come from a Bioshock sequel.

But it wasn't all about "realism." One demo set me in a quiet forest scene in front of a pit fire with abstract, angular forest creatures that couldn't have been made up of more than 100 polygons apiece. Another showed a brightly colored town with toy-like trains, planes, and even a tiny fire engine moving around. These were a nice indication that Oculus believes a strong sense of "presence" in a VR world doesn't necessarily require an insane level of graphical detail.

The initial demos all built up to the unquestionable highlight, an Epic-made Unreal Engine 4 showcase titled "Showdown." Set in a city street overrun by a firefight between armored shock troopers and a three-story tall robot, the demo moved me down the street slowly and automatically, letting me look as slow-motion carnage exploded all around. There was plenty of opportunity to track individual bullets and missiles through the air, see bits of rubble fly up toward (and sometimes through) my face, and even look in through the sunroof of a car as it flipped above me after an explosion.

It was an impressive graphical showcase, but it immediately made me question how workable this kind of first-person action shooter would be as a full game. Crawling through the scene in slow-mo was nice for a demo, but dashing and twisting through the environment at full speed is likely to be much more nausea-inducing. None of the demos shown let us move outside of the virtual space represented by the cushioned mat on the floor in fact, and that could be a somewhat limiting factor for VR game design going forward.

In any case, the experience left me more convinced than ever that Oculus is approaching hardware that can deliver an acceptable, nausea-free VR experience for an eventual mainstream consumer product (which Oculus still isn't discussing in detail). I've been enjoying my Oculus DK2 in the home office for a few weeks, but now I can't go back to it without being a bit disappointed. It doesn't live up to the experience I know I could be having if they just let me take a Crescent Bay prototype home.