Launched initially in an experimental state, the unveiling of the Nvidia-powered Project Tango Development Kit starts to move Project Tango towards the real world.

Project Tango is designed to give mobile devices a better understanding of the 3D space around them. Google says it's about "space and motion", and the outcome should be 3D environments with which you can better interact, as Project Tango sees the world the same way that humans do.

The Project Tango Development Kit is a 7-inch Android KitKat tablet, built by Nvidia and powered by the Tegra K1 platform. 

On the hardware side of things, there's 4GB or RAM to compliment the 192 GPU cores that Tegra K1 offers, along with 128GB of storage.

This isn't a consumer device however. It's designed for those developers who are going to work with Project Tango to research and develop the 3D "computer vision" that it aims to recreate, blending real and virtual worlds.

It's really the sensors that are important. There are front and rear cameras, along with a motion-tracking camera and a depth sensor to capture this visual information. Processing this information is what the powerful hardware takes care of, looking to support those building this new generation of 3D environments - be that estate agents mapping a house for sale, or game developers making a new virtual world.

"The Tango devkit is the first mobile device to move computer vision out of the research lab and to be widely distributed to mobile developers. It's also the first device to overcome previous limitations on computing power and inadequate algorithms and standard sensors," says Nvidia on its blog post.

The Project Tango Development Kit will be available in limited numbers, says Google, and the asking price when then tablet becomes available later in 2014 is $1024.