It is sad that VRML died or failed to reach wide adoption. Being able to transmit descriptions of 3D objects through the internet is the logical successor to the ubiquitous image, a description of a 2D object. And 3D is the real world: the holy grail of the internet is to transmit accurate descriptions of the real world.
One reason for the failure might be opposing goals for 3D in regards to openness for the user.
In the open camp, the content creator wants to provide a description of a 3D object to the user, and the user is free to do anything to render it usefully: rotate, move the camera, adjust lighting and material, generate arbitrary cross sections, measure distances, take it apart, render it for a stereo viewer, and even, say, 3D print it.
In the closed camp, the content creator wants the 3D content locked down, to be displayed in exactly a certain way and to allow the user only specified actions manipulating it. This approach most famous in games, and is also implicitly the case when using a Java applet to display and manipulate 3D objects. I suspect WebGL is going this route.
The failure I suspect is because the closed camp had too much political power. More open would have been the way to go. What is X3D doing?
Hypothesize that 2D image formats succeeded because they enabled all kinds of "open" actions: zoom, color adjust, crop.
Do we need animated 3D or reactive 3D? It's analogous to animated images (movies) or Javascript manipulating HTML Canvas or SVG (formerly Flash).
Inspired by looking at galleries of polyhedra, back in the day wonderfully populated in VRML, nowadays animated GIF at best, at least, that's all my browser can handle.
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