[mathogre]

I worked with VRML in '96. It was fun and interesting. Our company even had a couple reps from SGI demonstrate it on an SGI O2 machine. The two companies at the time who were the main proponents were SGI and Sony, though SGI was clearly the primary commercial force behind VRML. SGI even produced a 3D animated "cartoon" twice a week called "Floops". Then one day in 1997 SGI announced they were no longer supporting VRML, and it was over. I personally walked away from it right then.

Was VRML cool? Yes! Was it clunky? Yes. VRML had all the finesse of XML, but it worked. If you could think in 3D, you could create items fairly easily in VRML. On a Windows 95 machine (good heavens!) using Netscape with a plug-in, moving through a VRML world was not fast or smooth, but it was doable. I created a 3D version of my office to show my managers what was possible, and discussed how we might actually do some things with it.

Yes there are posts here indicating VRML is being used today. For all practical purposes however, it's dead and has been for a quarter century.