Oculus kicked off its Oculus Connect developer conference this week with a major announcement. The virtual reality company is making the original Oculus Rift developer kit (DK1) open source. That means anyone can now download the schematics, firmware, and mechanical documents for the first Oculus Rift headset over at github.

“We don’t want everyone to have to take the same risks we took,” said Oculus engineer Nirav Patel, according to PC World. “We just want to share the things we learned so you don’t have to do that. We’re all in this to build virtual reality together.”

The move is in keeping with Oculus’s pledge to remain open, VR Focus reports, and to keep both developers and fans up to speed with breakthroughs in virtual reality.

In his remarks, Patel reminisced about the many challenges his team encountered while designing the original Oculus, including an amusing anecdote about spending hours rubbing different foam materials on their faces, attempting to find one that was comfortable enough for prolonged use.

While an especially tech-savvy individual could theoretically build their own Oculus rift headset with the information now available, it would require access to state-of-the-art equipment. “Really we’re more interested in seeing what people do with the individual components,” said Patel.

There are no plans as of yet to make the DK2 – the company’s most recent development – open source. But it certainly remains a possibility.