AS I was watching Patrice Evra hurl his breakfast on the pristine Old Trafford turf in England last Saturday, I couldn’t help but think – what would that look like in 3D?

Before you guys think I have some weird vomit fetish, let me explain.
Those of you following me on Twitter (via @ianyee or @thestar_rage) or read my blog (blog.rage.com.my/categories/ianything-goes) would know that I was in Barcelona and England for about two weeks to meet footballers Lionel Messi, Frank Lampard and Fernando Torres; though Torres sort of flaked on me.

Apparently, you can’t do film an advertisement if you have a busted knee that needs surgery. Hello? Can anybody say Spanish diva? Sheesh.

But that’s a story for next week.

So back to hurling in 3D. After Torres’s no-show in Liverpool, I had a day off to roam around the city where I once did a summer course in college.

I went back to one of the pubs where my classmates and I used to cheer for Manchester United on the telly, in spite of the dangerous glares from Scousers surrounding us.

It felt exactly the same, only this time, they glared through 3D glasses. A lot of pubs in Britain now screen live football matches in stereoscopic 3D.

The 3D cameras that are becoming an increasingly common sight at English Premier League games.

What you do is you order a pint as usual, ask for a pair of 3D glasses and put down a deposit, and enjoy your match.

I watched the Manchester derby, United vs City, and for me, the only thing better than watching one of my favourite players, the incomparable Paul Scholes, plant a trademark header in the last-minute to beat the noisy neighbours, is to watch it in 3D.

The ball doesn’t fly out of the screen like it’s going to hit you or anything like that. What you do get with 3D football matches is a greater sense of depth on the screen, which makes the action more engrossing.

Thankfully, I didn’t watch the United vs Tottenham game the following week where Evra threw up due to the heat in 3D, but the thought immediately came to mind. I’d imagine it would be more gross than engrossing.

A 3D football match is filmed at a lower angle, so if United were attacking left to right, you’d see Antonio Valencia closer to you on the near side of the pitch, and Ryan Giggs looking a bit further off on the opposite wing. It’s pretty awesome, because you kind of feel like you’re there in the stadium.

The only problem was my eyes grew tired about 50 minutes into the game, though most of the others there didn’t seem to have the same problem. 

I first found out about the 3D World Cup when I was in Los Angeles in January for an assignment and met DreamWorks’ in-house stereoscopic expert Phil McNally.

One of the things I learned from “Captain 3D” was that they now adjust the distance between the two cameras for every scene they film, and that smoothens the process of your eyes adjusting to the difference in depth in each scene.

If you have an iPhone, you can even take your own stereoscopic still images with the “Camera 3D Pro” application.

The way it’s done on this free application (though most features have to be unlocked and paid for) will help you better understand how a stereoscopic image is created. You snap a picture, drag it a little to the left, and the app will automatically snap a second picture. It then adjusts it to fit together, and you’ll be able to see the results if you had a pair of old school red and green 3D glasses. 

The whole 3D thing might start catching on in Malaysia, too. Everyone’s favourite online guilty pleasure, DailyChilli.com, already got pulses racing with their story on the “rush to make 3D porn”. Apparently some pornography producers have already experimented with it.

But more importantly, a source from a Malaysian company have said that they’re trying to sponsor 3D World Cup screenings in cinema halls, so we can look forward to that.

Let’s just hope that nobody throws up or breaks a leg when the time comes.