Oculus is inviting press to a special event on June 11 in San Francisco. The company provided the image above along with the invite (which also accompanied news consumer pre-orders would start later this year, which bears the tagline “Step into the Rift,” as well, suggesting we’ll probably get more information about the consumer Rift headset launch, including possibly more final hardware details.
The Oculus Rift headset depicted in the image doesn’t match any existing hardware, but again it was also show off with the announcement of consumer hardware  – or at least a new version of developer hardware based on the final headset spec. This design features built-in headphones, and Oculus VR previously said integrated audio would be in the shipping version.
Oculus VR announced that the Rift consumer headset hardware would begin shipping during the first half of next year, with pre-orders commencing later in 2015. We still have yet to hear about pricing, but Oculus has detailed the recommended specs for PCs to be used with the Rift – at the same time it broke the news that Linux and Mac software development are on hold for now.
There’s still a lot left to learn about the Rift’s consumer launch, however, including exactly when buyers will be able to put in for pre-orders and when the first units will ship, beyond a very general timeline. We still also have yet to see what the experience of actually using the final Rift hardware will be like, and June 11 is nicely timed just ahead of E3 for live demo potential.
Oculus VP of Product and co-founder Nate Mitchell joined us at TechCrunch Disrupt NY this year, where he remained tight-lipped about launch plans. He did however advise us to watch out for more announcements regarding consumer hardware plans as we got closer to launch, so this seems like a likely part of that staged reveal.