The buzz word among many gamers these days is 'Oculus Rift'. But what is it, and why is it causing so much attention and excitement?

The Oculus Rift is a virtual reality headset that truly lets the wearer enter another world. Instead of playing a computer game while watching the action on a screen, however large and impressive it may be, imagine that you could see the action as if you were actually inside the game.

By cleverly combining a lightweight headset with the computer software in the game, the Oculus Rift technology gives a 100-degree field of vision, and true 3D experience that follows every movement of your head for a full 360 degrees.

Instead of watching a 3D TV or console, the Oculus Rift generates two separate images, one for each eye, within the headset, so you see landscapes and items as naturally as possible.

Putting on the headset truly allows you to immerse yourself in another world. The headset features a 7-inch screen with 1280 x 800 resolution in the development version, although this is expected to be increased to 1920 x 1080 in the final production version.

The key to the Oculus Rift is the low latency OLED display, which virtually eliminates juddering and motion blur, thanks to specially designed head tracker running at 250 Hz and containing gyroscopes, accelerometers and magnetometers to give a stable image without drift.

The Oculus Rift was first introduced at the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Centre. The idea for the concept came from the founder of Oculus VR, Palmer Luckey and was enhanced by John Carmack, co-founder of id Software, developers of the massively popular game 'Doom'. Carmack later joined Oculus VR as Chief Technology Officer.

Following the initial introduction in 2012, a Kickstarter campaign was organised to raise funds to further develop the device. So successful was the campaign that within four hours the initial target of US$250,000 had been raised, with the total rising to over US$1 million after just 36 hours.

To further develop the idea, in August 2012 Oculus VR announced a development kit which prospective developers for games could purchase for US$300, these sold phenomenally fast, and has recently been replaced by an updated developer kit 2 (DK2) expected to begin shipping in July this year.

The commercial version of the Oculus Rift is expected to be released later in 2014 and in addition to several games with support for the Oculus Rift added as an enhancement, new games developed specifically for the Oculus Rift are expected to be announced.

So watch the news for the release details of what could truly be a game changing experience!