Format
VRML occurs as text file format where, e.g., vertices and edges for a 3D polygon can be specified along with a surface color, image-mapped textures, shininess, transparency, and so in. URLs can be associated by using graphical components so that the web browser might fetch a web-web page or even a fresh VRML file from either the Internet when the user clicks on the specific graphical component. Animations, sounds, lighting, and more aspects of the virtual world can interact with a user or even can be triggered by external events such as timers. The favorite Script Node allows to add program code (e.g., written in Java or JavaScript (ECMAScript)) to a VRML file. VRML files come usually known as worlds and develop a .wrl extension (for example island.wrl). Although VRML worlds apply the text format it could typically become compressed utilizing gzip so that they transport above a cyberspace supplementary quickly. Virtually all 3D modeling programs can save objects and scenes in VRML format.

Standardization
A Web3D Consortium has been formed to further a collective development of the format.

A foremost version of VRML was specified around November 1994. This version was specified from either, & super closely resembled, a Application Programming Interface and file format of the Open Inventor software component, originally developed by SGI. A todays & functionally complete version is VRML97 (ISO/IEC 14772-1:1997). VRML has at present been superseded by X3D (ISO/IEC 19775-7).

Emergence, popularity, decline and rebirth

A term VRML was coined by Dave Raggett within a paper submitted to [http://www94.web.cern.ch/WWW94/ The First International Conference on the World-Wide Web] in 1994, & foremost discussed at a WWW94 VRML BOF established by Tim Berners-Lee, where Mark Pesce presented the Labyrinth demo he developed with Tony Parisi & Peter Kennard.

VRML reached a height of its popularity fallowing a release of VRML2 in 1997, when it was utilized in a few home homepages & web sites like CyberTown, which offered 3D chats. A format experienced been championed by SGI's Cosmo Software; when SGI restructured within 1998 a section was sold to Platinum Technologies, which was then taken above by Computer Associates, which did not prepare or even distribute a software system. To fill the void a kind of short-fugacious proprietary Web 3D formats emerged over a next pack years, including Microsoft Chrome, Adobe Atmosphere and Shockwave 3D, none of which are supported now. VRML's capabilities remained largely a equivalent when realtime 3D graphics saved improving. A VRML Consortium changed its name to the Web3D Consortium, and began operate on the successor to VRML - X3D.

When VRML is however widely utilized, particularly inside education & the food and drug administration in which an open specification is virtually all valued, it has at present been superseded by X3D. A MPEG-4 Interactive Profile (ISO/IEC 14496) was based in VRML (currently on X3D), & X3D is largely back-compatible by having it. VRML is besides however utilized as a file format for interchange of 3D system, particularly from either CAD systems.