The Fun Optical Illusion You Can Make With Your iPhone X

You can use the iPhone X’s powerful depth sensor for more than just face recognition. The technology also allows you to create wild optical illusions on your phone. The phone’s 3D camera allowed Swedish artist Peder Norrby to create a depth illusion that makes an image on the phone look 3D, as Co.Design reports.

The app Norrby created with ARKit face tracking, TheParallaxView, uses a technique called trompe l’oeil, a style you might have seen before in the form of pavement art. It uses hyperrealistic art to give the illusion that a 2D image is really 3D.

The eye tracking makes the image move as the camera does, making it look like you’re manipulating a 3D object, either one that recesses deep into the phone or pops out from the screen. As Mark Wilson explains on Co.Design, this face tracking “allows the screen to create not just one static 3D illusion, but dozens a second, tricking your mind into believing that there’s a whole other world behind the screen of your phone.”

It’s a monoscopic effect, according to Norrby, so the illusion works particularly well in video form, but in person, you’ll need to close one eye to make it work to the same degree.

You can see how it works in the video below. Norrby has submitted the app to Apple’s App Store, but it’s still pending approval. He’s also planning on submitting the source code for developers, which means that anyone could incorporate it into their apps—which we imagine could lead to some pretty amazing video games.