Oculus has announced the release of its latest software development kit, Oculus PC SDK 0.7 for the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset will be available on August 20th.

The release of SDK 0.7 is noted as a “major release” from Oculus and will bring a number of improvements that include more stability and reduced latency performance to gaming and applications on the Rift. With SDK 0.7, Oculus is removing the Extended Mode and introducing a new Direct Driver Mode that was developed closely with Nvidia and AMD.

“Direct Driver Mode is the most robust and reliable solution for interfacing with the Rift to date,” said Oculus in an official blog post. “Rather than inserting VR functionality between the OS and the graphics driver, headset awareness is added directly to the driver. As a result, Direct Driver Mode avoids many of the latency challenges of Extended Mode and also significantly reduces the number of conflicts between the Oculus SDK and third-party applications.”

Oculus points out to developers that any games and applications built on older versions of the SDK will no longer be supported, and will require to be updated to the latest version of the SDK to run properly. Oculus intends to make the process of updating to SDK 0.7 as smooth as possible for developers to take advantage of the latest improvements.

For more details on the upcoming Oculus PC SDK 0.7, check out the official developers blog.