Developers now have access to Oculus Rift Dev Kit 2 (pictures)

Today, Oculus VR released the Oculus Rift Dev Kit 2. Known as DK2, it offers a number of advances over the first developer kit, released a year ago. Among them is "precise, low-latency positional head tracking using an external camera that allows you to move with 6-degrees-of-freedom and opens up all sorts of new gameplay opportunities like peering around corners, leaning in to get a closer look at objects in the world, and kicking back on a virtual beach," according to Oculus VR.

As Oculus VR put it in a blog post about the new dev kit, "DK2 is not the Holodeck yet, but it's a major step in the right direction."

A look at the internal assembly of the Oculus Rift. According to the company, the new dev kit includes "orientation tracking, a built-in latency tester, an on-headset USB accessory port, new optics, elimination of the infamous control box, a redesigned SDK and further optimized Unity and Unreal Engine 4 integrations."

A look at the front of the DK2.

Oculus VR timed the release of the DK2 to this week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.