A .WRZ file functions as a compressed VRML world, meaning a .WRL 3D scene—containing text-based definitions for models, materials, textures, lighting, and even simple interactivity—has been packed via gzip because VRML’s text nature compresses extremely well, leading many systems to label such files as .WRZ or `.wrl.gz`, and to open one you usually decompress it using a gzip-capable tool to reveal a .WRL file that VRML/X3D viewers can display, assuming texture files remain in their correct relative directories.
One fast way to confirm gzip compression is checking for the header 1F 8B at the beginning, which strongly aligns with WRZ’s role as a gzipped WRL, and many users confuse this with RWZ, a file type used for email rule export files, so files tied to email management may actually be RWZ, while those from modeling or CAD tools are likely legitimate WRZ files.

Saying a .WRZ is a "Compressed VRML World" means it’s simply a VRML scene—normally saved as .WRL, with "WRL" standing for *world*—that has been gzipped to make the file smaller, as VRML uses structured text to describe full interactive 3D scenes including objects, materials, textures, lighting, and even animations, and since text compresses very efficiently, the VRML community standardized on .wrl.gz or .wrz as names for gzipped VRML files.
In practical terms, "compressed VRML world" also tells you exactly how to handle it: treat the file as a gzip stream first, which will usually yield a .WRL you can load in VRML/X3D viewers or import into tools that still understand VRML, and a simple technical hint is the gzip "magic bytes" 1F 8B, which, if present at the start of the WRZ in a hex viewer, strongly suggests it’s a genuine gzipped VRML world rather than some unrelated format with a similar extension.
When you look inside a VRML "world" (the .WRL you obtain once a .WRZ is decompressed), you typically find a node-based scene graph explaining both the visuals and navigation, starting with Transform/Group structures that handle position, rotation, and scale, followed by Shape nodes that join geometry—Box—with appearance details via Material and ImageTexture, plus common world features like Viewpoint cameras, NavigationInfo movement modes, and environment bindings such as Background, Fog, or Sound.
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WRZ file extraction kindly check out the web-site. Interactivity in VRML comes from Sensor nodes like contact-based sensors that send events, while animation flows from TimeSensor and assorted interpolators that generate evolving values, connected through ROUTEs tying eventOuts to eventIns, and richer behaviors use script nodes written in VRMLscript/Javascript or occasionally Java, plus Anchor nodes for hyperlink-like jumps, with the spec differentiating between nodes affected by transforms and nodes that sit outside the spatial hierarchy—such as interpolators, NavigationInfo, TimeSensor, and script—making the world behave more like a tiny application than a mere mesh.
The phrase "Compressed VRML World" for .WRZ indicates that WRZ isn’t a separate 3D type but a normal VRML .WRL scene that’s been gzip-packed to make distribution smaller, preserving the VRML text that defines meshes, textures, lights, cameras, navigation, and basic interactivity, wrapped in gzip with typical extensions .wrz or .wrl.gz, a convention cited by the Library of Congress; that’s why tools like 7-Zip/gzip open it, and why checking for gzip’s magic bytes the header 1F 8B is a good sanity check.