TL;DR: the parallax effect only looks 'impressive' on video, because our brain inteprets it as part of the filmed environment, but when you sit directly in fron

TL;DR: the parallax effect only looks 'impressive' on video, because our brain inteprets it as part of the filmed environment, but when you sit directly in front of the screen the illusion falls apart (unless you use some stereoscopic optics to trick your brain again into intepreting the parallax effect as 3D). It was the perfect nerd-bait for YouTube, but not much more ;)