Tomorrow is the big day, fellow football fans. That’s when FIFA announces the full brackets for next year’s World Cup, to be held in South Africa. Yes, there’s a tech angle here. Sony has said that it will film the entire tournament, from the very first kick-off until the final whistle of the final game in Johannesburg, with 3D cameras.

Sony just recently said they want to get serious with 3D displays this fiscal year, and they seem to stick to their plan. Following the professional 3D camera that shoots video at 240fps and a futuristic 3D stereoscopic display the company introduced last month, we now get to see a 3D display sized at no less than 280 inches.

One of the most spectacular booths at the Digital Contents Expo in Tokyo (which ended Sunday) was the one of the Yoichiro Kawaguchi lab at the University of Tokyo. Their so-called “world’s first spherical bumpy display” can be touched by viewers to feel the surface moving and morphing.

Pioneer has showcased the Floating Vision at the Digital Contents Expo in Tokyo (that ended Sunday), another 3D display that doesn’t require you to wear glasses (yawn) to view 3D images. It’s not bad at all though, even though visitors flocked to Sony’s booth to see their stereoscopic 3D display (which was a bit cooler).

You can connect the Floating Vision to a PC via USB 2.0 to view images or videos “floating” over the display (5.7 inches, 640 × 480 VGA resolution). What’s pretty cool is that you can “interact” with the image, as the device detects your hand movements. It’s also possible to “control” an image with your voice (the device has a mic on its front). Both Windows PCs and Macs are supported.

Oh, right, 3D laptops. I almost forgot. If you like 3D so much that you want to have it with you wherever you go, then 3D laptops may or may not soon be all the rage. No need to wait, though, as Acer’s 15.6-inch Aspire 5738DG will be available this week.

No pictures for this yet, but Hitachi has reportedly developed a 3D projection system that allows viewers to watch 3D images from any angle, and perhaps more importantly, without the need for eyeglasses. While the first feature makes sure a group of people can see 3D images at the same time on a single screen, I am aware the second one isn’t the first of its kind for a 3D system.

All the big players are here at CEATEC showing off their latest iteration of 3D televisions. They’re bright, and colorful, and pretty, and impressive. And it looks like they all require the use of special viewing glasses. Come on, guys, I saw this stuff last year at IFA: have you really made no substantial progress on easy-to-watch 3D displays? I almost walked past the Holoart booth, and I’m glad I didn’t. They’re taking a unique approach to 3D viewing.

Sony seems to put a lot of emphasis on 3D, as far as the future direction of their TV and optical media divisions is concerned. The company has now shown a first picture of a powerful 3D camera for professional use [JP] that will be presented to the general public during next week’s CEATEC 2009 electronics exhibition in Japan.

Yesterday I introduced CORNEA, the CAVE system at KAUST. CAVEs are great, but they require a huge investment: you need to build a facility around it, or renovate a space to accommodate it. Then you need to spend enormous amounts of money to buy and install the gear. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have an immersive 3D environment without all that effort? Researchers at KAUST, in conjunction with folks from U.C. San Diego, are doing just that with NexCAVE, a scalable, modular immersion system.

In addition to NexCAVE, there’s several other great visualization projects underway at KAUST. Video and more inside.

When in doubt, make a sequel. When in doubt in the year 2009, tack on 3D. That’s the mentality of Hollywood these days—“remakes” are another in thing—and it looks like will be in theaters on December 17, 2010 Tron: Legacy. Considering my only knowledge of Tron comes from that one Simpsons episode, I’m not going to pretend to be excited. But maybe some of you are!

Words cannot describe the anticipation all of CrunchGear feels for the upcoming Prince of Persia movie, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. You may remember him from… nope, nope, I have no idea who he is, either. But anyway, news! Despite the fact that every two-bit Hollywood movie these days comes in 3D in some capacity, well, Prince of Persia is no different. There’s a catch, though.

Time published a bunch of info about Fujifilm’s upcoming 3D consumer camera system early last week. The mag talked about how how the FinePix Real 3D W1 the next best thing, which I claimed was doubtful considering its price, but one small detail was left out: this camera can also record 3D movies. That’s sweet.

Update: More pics of the camera and system after the jump.

How badly do you want to watch 3D movies at home? Scale of 1 to 10, let’s say. I’m a 1—I patently have zero interest in 3D movies. (If I want to see a story in 3D I’ll go to Broadway to see a play. Bam, 3D.) I ask because there’s a company out there, Sonic Solutions, that appears to be ramping up for a major rollout of at-home 3D movies.

We like innovative products as much as the next nerd, but we’re thinking that Fuji might be beyond its time with this 3D camera. It sounds sweet. The Fujifilm camera can produce 3D pics by using two lens that are spaced out a lot like human eyes. It then uses fancy software to combine the two images into one 3D picture that can then be viewed on either a special digital photo frame or on a special Fuji print. But the whole system is too expensive, which is a damn shame.

It appears that, come hell or high water, companies are determined to push 3D features. Acer’s the latest, announcing a 15.6-inch notebook due in late October that features software to convert regular 2D movies into 3D, along with movies specifically shot in 3D.

The CandyFab 6000 is an updated version of the larger 4000 model and can make 3D objects out of sugar. It uses Arduino boards to control the fabricating arms and fits on a desktop.

So is 2009 the year of the 3D movie? James Cameron’s Avatar comes out in December, and everything I’ve heard is all, “Oh my God, we’ll need to knock down the Jefferson Memorial and replace it with a Cameron Memorial this movie is so great.” And the Cannes Film Festival opens today with Disney’s Up, which is another 3D film that’s supposed to knock our socks off.

The press release is long on talk and short on actual information, but it looks like Panasonic is looking to simplify the workflow for 3D content with this crazy-looking camera. It has, as you can see, two lenses.

After that it’s pretty much a mystery.Are they splitting a sensor? Are there two? Is the LCD 3D? It’s all very vague at this point.

Two new studies, one from the Consumer Electronics Association and the Entertainment and Technology Center at USC and the other from Meant to be Seen (“the foremost authority group on stereoscopic 3D gaming and home entertainment”), suggest that consumers — that is, average people like you and me — dig 3D movies. Wearing glasses to enjoy 3D content is not seen as a big impediment, and 40% of the participants reported that they would prefer to watch a film in 3D rather than watch the same film in 2D.

So what didja think ’bout the 3D commercials? Monsters and Aliens looks like a sweet movie but did the 3D trailer make you wanna see it more? Oh, and how ’bout the SoBe dancing lizard one? Me? I thought they were lame.

Sound off after the jump with a quick poll.