The commercial release of the virtual reality headset known as Oculus Rift should be just around the corner, and with the technology looks to be something great allowing you to do everything from being Hatsune Miku to sleeping next to Hatsune Miku, we’re sure that gamers and fans of gadgets alike are positively itching to get hold of it.

Until then, those of us not willing to shell out for a developers’ kit will have to bide our time with YouTube testimonials such as this one done by Cymatic Bruce. In the video Bruce takes us on a virtual tour of none other than the boiler room setting from Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. Even better, the way he presents it allows us all to watch in 3D without the need for an Oculus Rift or any special equipment.

http://youtu.be/1_53qCPtLaY

After a brief introduction, Bruce loads up the VR environment created by Red of Paw (Nick Pittom). It starts him off in a corridor lined with pressure gauges leading into the main room.

Walking in you can see the susuwatari (soot sprites) hard at work carrying pieces of coal to the furnace one by one.

Bruce tried to get as close a look as possible by making his character (Chihiro/Sen) crouch.

After that he uses an Xbox controller to walk around the room and get a closer look at Kamaji.

A true tester, Bruce checks the walls for glitches and gaps and finds that it’s a well-made structure that has depths when looking around all the corners.

Watching these pictures and videos with its double image casually might be awkward but Bruce is presenting it as a stereoscopic image which allows you to view it 3D with just a little eye stretching.

If you’ve never tried a stereoscopic image before it might be hard to get at first. People’s eyes are naturally crossed slightly so to view these images you have to make both your eyes look straight ahead. For example looking at the image of Kamaji above try to lock your left eye on his glasses in the left image and try to fix your right eye on the glasses in the right image. If you get it, you’ll see the two images merge together and the result with be something like this.

However, the middle image should look as if it’s 3D. If you get good at doing it you should be able to watch the whole video of Bruce walking through the room that way.

If you can’t do it, I’m sorry. Some people are just naturally better at it than others. If that’s the case, you can always buy the dev version of Oculus Rift for US$300 and download the environment from Red of Paw using the link below. If you do then you’ll also be ready for Red of Paw’s next project: My Neighbor Totoro.

Source: YouTube via Kotaku (English)
Cymatic Bruce’s full review with download link for Spirited Away’s virutal boiler room
Red of Paw’s Blog featuring Totoro updates
Oculus Rift