Oculus Rift starts shipping to customers in time for 28 March launch date

It's a big moment for the company, which began with a Kickstarter campaign in 2012

A man uses a prototype of the Rift at CES 2014 (ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

The Oculus Rift is on its way to pre-ordering customers, the CEO of the virtual reality company has announced.

Writing on Twitter, Oculus VR chief executive Brendan Iribe confirmed that the very first consumer version of the Rift headset has been shipped.

The devices should land on customers' doorsteps on Monday 28 March, the Rift's official launch date.

It's a big moment for the company, who many credit with kicking off the VR revolution when they crowdfunded the Rift on Kickstarter in 2012, raising almost $2.5 million in a month.

It's also significant that they're the first big VR company to get their product to customers - pre-orders are still open for the HTC Vive, the Rift's main competitor, but they won't ship until May.

The PlayStation VR is possibly the biggest rival to these two, but it's not coming out until the end of the year. Headsets like Google Cardboard and the Samsung Gear VR have proved popular, but they can't match up to the Rift or Vive in terms of performance.

Palmer Luckey, the founder of the company and inventor of the Rift, also spoke about the impending deliveries, saying on Twitter he was "getting ready to flood our servers with Rifters."