 This is Addie with The Verge. One year ago, I saw the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset for the first time. It was impressive, but there were some obvious problems. You couldn't turn your head without the world blurring, and the low resolution meant everything looked like it was behind a screen door. At CES 2014, Oculus unveiled a new version that's supposed to bring virtual reality in line with real reality. The new Crystal Cove prototype isn't perfect, but thanks to a better screen and some new software techniques, looking around actually feels natural, not blurry. On a normal display, pretend this is a hypothetical normal display, but it's perfect. It has no switching time, no lag whatsoever. You render an image on the PC, you send it to the screen, and then that image stays on the screen until it gets sent a new image. The problem with that is that means that during motion, the image is only correct for a vanishingly small amount of time, then the rest of the frame it's wrong until it gets a new image. You end up with an image that's actually wrong most of the time. It's like a broken clock. It's right for very brief moments every once in a while, but the majority of the data that you're getting from it is garbage. What we're doing with our low persistence prototypes is rendering an image, sending it to the display, showing the image on the display very briefly, and then turning it off, and then leaving it black all the way until the next frame. Then the next frame, new image, then it goes off. If you do that at a high enough frame rate, it means that you get a smooth continuous image that doesn't have any garbage data in it. That's not the only new thing in Crystal Cove. If you lean forward or sideways, your in-game viewpoint will too, thanks to a camera and sensors that sense where your head is. The wild card, of course, is games. I was able to get a second look at E! Valkyrie, a space dog fighting game I also saw at E3. With the Rift, you can really see ships moving in your peripheral vision, and you can target missiles with your eyes. But Valkyrie is only one of a few games you can play on the Rift, and it's hard to tell what will actually work. Oculus says its Rift prototype still isn't what it wants to ship to consumers, but it's getting a lot closer. It's still just early days of us getting all of the features worked out. We've shown the HD prototype in the past, now we're showing the Crystal Cove prototype, which has the positional tracking and the low persistence. So each of those big ticket items that we wanted to solve for the consumer market, for the consumer product, we are solving one by one. We're running out of things to solve, so we're getting very close. We do know that gamepads, I mean that's what we're using right now, they're not the end game for VR input. They're kind of a hokey leftover from what people know how to use, and you can make it work well in VR. You can make a game that works well with a gamepad, but what we really want to do is be able to track the body, be able to track your movements, especially your hand movements in a natural way that is like real life, and I think we'll have to get there. Of course, you won't ever mistake Crystal Cove's virtual reality for the real world, it's at least a lot more fun to jack into.
 This is Addie with The Verge.
 One year ago, I saw the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset for the first time.
 It was impressive, but there were some obvious problems.
 You couldn't turn your head without the world blurring, and the low resolution meant everything
 looked like it was behind a screen door.
 At CES 2014, Oculus unveiled a new version that's supposed to bring virtual reality
 in line with real reality.
 The new Crystal Cove prototype isn't perfect, but thanks to a better screen and some new
 software techniques, looking around actually feels natural, not blurry.
 On a normal display, pretend this is a hypothetical normal display, but it's perfect.
 It has no switching time, no lag whatsoever.
 You render an image on the PC, you send it to the screen, and then that image stays on
 the screen until it gets sent a new image.
 The problem with that is that means that during motion, the image is only correct for a vanishingly
 small amount of time, then the rest of the frame it's wrong until it gets a new image.
 You end up with an image that's actually wrong most of the time.
 It's like a broken clock.
 It's right for very brief moments every once in a while, but the majority of the data that
 you're getting from it is garbage.
 What we're doing with our low persistence prototypes is rendering an image, sending
 it to the display, showing the image on the display very briefly, and then turning it
 off, and then leaving it black all the way until the next frame.
 Then the next frame, new image, then it goes off.
 If you do that at a high enough frame rate, it means that you get a smooth continuous
 image that doesn't have any garbage data in it.
 That's not the only new thing in Crystal Cove.
 If you lean forward or sideways, your in-game viewpoint will too, thanks to a camera and
 sensors that sense where your head is.
 The wild card, of course, is games.
 I was able to get a second look at E! Valkyrie, a space dog fighting game I also saw at E3.
 With the Rift, you can really see ships moving in your peripheral vision, and you can target
 missiles with your eyes.
 But Valkyrie is only one of a few games you can play on the Rift, and it's hard to tell
 what will actually work.
 Oculus says its Rift prototype still isn't what it wants to ship to consumers, but it's
 getting a lot closer.
 It's still just early days of us getting all of the features worked out.
 We've shown the HD prototype in the past, now we're showing the Crystal Cove prototype,
 which has the positional tracking and the low persistence.
 So each of those big ticket items that we wanted to solve for the consumer market, for
 the consumer product, we are solving one by one.
 We're running out of things to solve, so we're getting very close.
 We do know that gamepads, I mean that's what we're using right now, they're not the end
 game for VR input.
 They're kind of a hokey leftover from what people know how to use, and you can make it
 work well in VR.
 You can make a game that works well with a gamepad, but what we really want to do is
 be able to track the body, be able to track your movements, especially your hand movements
 in a natural way that is like real life, and I think we'll have to get there.
 Of course, you won't ever mistake Crystal Cove's virtual reality for the real world,
 it's at least a lot more fun to jack into.