i3D app demonstrates glasses-free 3D on your iPhone 4, iPad 2

The iPhone 4 and iPad 2 may not have a fancy 3D display but that does not mean you won’t be able to view 3D content on them and prove that Jeremie Francone and Laurence Nigay from the Laboratory of Informatics of Grenoble at the EHCI Research Group have come up with a brilliant new app called i3D.

We’d already told you an app like this was in the works and now it’s finally available. It uses the front facing camera on the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 to track the head movements and the angle from the screen of the user and then adjusts the objects on the screen accordingly in real-time, so that it gives a sense of depth to them. And the best part about this is that it does not require 3D glasses at all.

The app comes with several demos built-in and is completely free. With this technology, virtually any device with a front facing camera would be able to display 3D content. It’s a different matter though that the content has to be designed specifically for this purpose and content such as movies probably won’t work because they are shot in a specific manner for a different viewing environment. Still, content such as games can adopt this technology easily as they can adjust their graphics in real-time according to the position of the user’s head. And again, no need to wear those cumbersome glasses.

Unfortunately, the app is a proof-of-concept only and for the time being its reactions are somewhat sluggish to the movement of your head (you can, of course, move the iPad and keep your head still, the effect is the same). Now a proper implementation would require a wider angle camera as it’s really easy to get out of the iPad’s line of sight when you hold it at an arm’s length.

Source • iTunes