Oculus is sending developers the finished version of its virtual reality headset

Oculus is sending developers the finished version of its Rift headset, according to a blog post.

The shipments, which will be made this week, are for any developer who is making a game or app for Rift that is being launched in the first quarter of 2016.

"If you're shipping a Rift title in Q1, you'll need early access to Rift hardware and new platform features to finalize your game or application," the post reads. "The Rift SDK 1.0 and runtime include features tied to the consumer product, so we've currently limited the release to developers putting final touches on launch titles."

Oculus says that the company, which was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion (£1.3 billion), is shipping more and more of the Rift hardware every week.

The Rift is, essentially, a head-mounted computer with two screens that sit just in front of the user's eyes. The user's vision is obscured and anything that appears on the screen is seen by the brain as "real." This, in turn, means a whole new reality - a virtual one - is created.

This differs from augmented reality - also known as "mixed reality" - which adds to the experience. Microsoft's HoloLens headset is an example of augmented reality and is set to ship to developers in 2016.