In preparation for the upcoming Oculus Rift release date, the device has finally unveiled a new virtual reality headset featuring 360-degree trailing, that lets the external camera track the back and front of the headset.

"It's as big of a leap as we made from DK1 to DK2," says Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe, referring to the first two versions of the Rift development kit, the latest being Dev Kit 2.

The new and improved version is called 'Crescent Bay,' which is significantly lighter than the previous models.

"This is not the consumer product," Iribe clarified. But, he added, "it is much, much closer."

There are speculations that a consumer version of the virtual reality headset will hit the market in early 2015.

This has been a great year for Oculus - going from a Kickstarter project that gained massive attention to a Facebook-owned company.

Mark Zuckerberg's organization saw enormous promise in Oculus' vision, convincing them enough to invest $2 billion to acquire the business.

This shows Facebook's confidence in the untested technology, that might one day be the next big thing in social media and connectivity.

According to Washington Post, Oculus Rift's headsets are now being explored to "report news about farming in virtual reality".

Not only in news and farming, the technology is also attracting interest in the field of immersive education.

"Since the 1990s, different forms of immersive education have crept into the classroom, with simulations being used in medical school and the military, and gaming, such as Minecraft, being used in K-12 to teach a variety of subjects ranging from American history to space "travel to arts and culture. Such learning could soon reach another level with the arrival of headsets like the Oculus Rift and Sony Morpheus, in which students don't look at two-dimensional screens but perceive themselves to be in all-encompassing virtual worlds," ZDNet reported.

The Oculus team were also tapped recently by Samsung to develop a virtual reality headset that will be paired with Galaxy Note 4, the Samsung Gear VR.