A team of French researchers has brought glasses-free 3D to the iPhone and iPad in an ingenious piece of visual trickery that offers a similar effect to the new Nintendo 3DS handheld games console.

Jeremie Francone amd Laurence Nigay, from the Engineering Human-Computer Interaction research group, harnessed the front-facing cameras on the iPad 2 (video) and iPhone 4 (video) to track the user's head, thus allowing their software to deliver 3D experiences without the need for glasses.

Clips of the technology - dubbed "head-coupled perspective" - in action have begun going viral on YouTube, garnering hundreds of thousands of hits so far.

"It is based on a efficient head-tracker that uses the front-facing camera of the device," the researchers explain on their website.