The judges have spoken and the winner of the official ‘Best of Show’ award at CES 2014 is the Oculus Rift “Crystal Cove” prototype. Crystal Cove is an improved version of the original Oculus Rift virtual reality (VR) headset which was a runaway success on the crowd funding site Kickstarter in 2012.

Virtual reality, for the uninitiated, is the use of technology to create an interactive, seemingly real environment for the user. It has been a part of science fiction and geek culture for decades, which is one of the reasons why Rift is causing such a buzz. Crystal Cove shows just how far Oculus VR has come since Kickstarter by fixing some of the biggest complaints that developers have had with the Rift as well as adding in some extra functionality with two major upgrades.

A new OLED display replaces the old LED unit halving the response time to 30 milliseconds and helping to almost eliminate the problem of motion blur. While the other improvement is a combination of an external camera and sensors on the headset that can detect the relative depth of the Rift wearer’s head. This means that Crystal Cove can detect you leaning your head forward to read something on a piece of paper that you see inside of a game and translate that into your character mirroring the motion by leaning forward.

If winning awards wasn’t enough of a great start to 2014 for the Oculus Rift team there’s also news that Valve, the company behind the Steam gaming platform, are just “days away” from releasing a VR software development kit. All of this bodes well for our desire to see affordable, realistic VR gaming becoming a reality.

While Crystal Cove managed to scoop two awards at the show there are still 13 other awards that were announced as well.

Razer once again took home some of the top awards at CES with the modular PC concept, Project Christine taking the ‘Best PC’ trophy and the Nabu fitness tracking smartwatch getting the ‘People’s Choice Award’.

Sony had a fantastic CES this year also bagging a pair of awards. The Xperia Z1 Compact smartphone, which will be coming to South African shores in February, won the ‘Best Mobile Technology’ award with the impressive PlayStation Now streaming service winning for ‘Best Software’.

With the winners having been announced, the one thing we are going to remember about CES 2014 was the explosion in wearable technology. Whether it was fitness trackers or smartwatches, or the Nabu that was both at the same time, we’re expecting a slew of sensors, bangles and watches to hit the market in the next 12 months.

The full list of winners looks like this:

• Best Startup – Airtame
• Best Digital Health & Fitness Product – Jaybird Reign
• Best Automotive Electronics Product – Corvette Performance Data Recorder
• Best Audio Product – Clearview Clio

• Best Video Product – Dish Virtual Joey

• Best Software – Sony Playstation Now

• Best Emerging Technology – Oculus Rift ‘Crystal Cove’ Prototype

• Best Mobile Technology – Sony Xperia Z1 Compact

• Best Gaming Product – Valve Steam Machines

• Best Offbeat Product – Sen.Se Mother

• Best Kid-Friendly Product – Mimo Baby With Intel

• Best Maker-Friendly Technology – Makerbot Replicator Desktop 3d Printer

• Best Pc – Razer Project Christine

• Best Of The Best – Oculus Rift ‘Crystal Cove’ Prototype

Source: Engadget