You know how Nietzsche once wrote "if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee"? Well one Swedish coding artist seems to have created a very literal representation of the phrase. Using a combo of Apple's ARKit, iPhone X's face-tracking abilities, and the Unity gaming engine, Peter Norrby has created a crazy optical illusion that turns your smart phone into a surreal and strange portal to nowhere.

Norrby first posted about the illusion in a tweet earlier this week, eliciting what was pretty much a collective "whoa, dude" from the social media site:

He then followed it up with an explainer video, where he also announced the app that makes this wild mind-freak possible — Parallax View — is in review on the App Store, meaning it will soon be available for the general public to download for free. He also plans to publish the source code.

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As Norrby explains in the video, the app uses the iPhone X's TrueDepth camera to track the head in 3D, figuring out the position of the eye. Then, it proceeds to render what the "hole" (or whatever other object is on the screen) would look like when viewed from that angle. He also states that for best viewing, you should close one eye.

Once Parallax View is officially added to the App Store, this piece will definitely be updated with a link. Until then, though, if you'd like to check out some other really cool apps that take advantage of ARKit's 3D capabilities, you can take a look at our full list of ARKit apps here.

Thoughts?

What do you think of Norrby's creation? Are you excited to try Parallax view for yourself? Share in the comments!

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