DEVELOP AWARDS: Oculus Rift wins Technical Innovation prize

Oculus VR took home the hotly contested Technical Innovation award at this year’s Develop Industry Excellence Awards 2013.

The firm won the prize for its much anticipated Oculus Rift VR headset. It surpassed a strong list of nominees including Dimensional Imaging, GameMaker (YoYo Games), Hitman: Absolution – Crowd tech (IO Interactive), Just Dance TV (Ubisoft Reflections), Marmalade Juice (Marmalade), Unreal Engine (Epic Games) and Wonderbook (London Studio).

Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe accepted the award on behalf of the company, which was presented by ARM’s head of ecosystems Nizar Romdan.

The virtual reality headset, which is the brainchild of founder Palmer Luckey, has been generating serious excitement in the development community since its unveiling at E3 2012.

Oculus Rift allows players to see game environments in a sharp 3D visuals. Major studios including Epic Games and Valve have thrown their support behind the device, and the Oculus team have been shopping the hardware around at conferences around the world.

Development kits began to ship in late March, and in June the firm announced that it had secured a further $16 million in funding as readies the Rift for a consumer release.

You can view the full list of the Develop Awards winners here.

Event partners for this year’s Develop Awards include Platinum Partners Crytek, Deep Silver and Microsoft, Gold Partners Testronic, Amiqus, UKIE, Perforce Software, Sumo Digital and Pitbull Studio, Drinks Reception Partner NaturalMotion Games, Table Gift Partner OPM Recruitment, Event Partners Nova Scotia Business Inc and Playmob, and Award Partner ARM.