This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. 

Thus spoke Morpheus in the ground breaking motion picture The Matrix. Needing no introduction, the film focuses around the story of people living a virtual reality simulation and how they can manipulate their sorroundings. Very soon this sort of situation may become a reality, as companies compete to develop the next innovation in gaming: Virtual Reality head mounted displays.

The Oculus Rift is the most well known of these products. Set for release in late 2014 or early 2015, the headset features a 7-inch LCD screen with a promised aspect ratio of 1920 x 1080. Designed to imitate human sight as close as possible, the device features a field of view more than 90 degrees horizontal – as well as eye overlap for an immersive gaming experience. The Oculus Rift has attracted huge attention from gaming giants such as John Carmack and has recently been bought out by Facebook  for over 400 million USD in cash and 1.6 Billion USD of company stock.

The main competitor to the Oculus Rift is the Virtual Reality headset in development by gaming giant Sony. Known only as Project Morpheus (after the eponymous character from the Matrix). Very little is known about this device but it will be fully compatible with the Playstation 4 and is currently scheduled for release in 2014.