A .WRZ file is best understood as a gzipped VRML world, where a .WRL 3D scene—built from plain-text instructions describing geometry, materials, textures, lights, and occasional animations—has been gzip-packed for easier sharing, which resulted in the convention of calling such files .WRZ or `.wrl.gz`, and the usual approach is to
extract them with tools like 7-Zip or `gzip` to obtain a .WRL file that VRML-supporting viewers can load, with textures appearing correctly only if their referenced image files stay in the proper folders.
A quick way to verify a real gzip file is to check whether it starts with the signature bytes 1F 8B in hex, which strongly indicates a compressed stream consistent with WRZ being a gzipped WRL, and a frequent confusion comes from mixing WRZ with RWZ, since .RWZ is tied to email filtering rule files rather than 3D content, meaning a file from email migration may be RWZ, while something from a 3D or CAD workflow is more likely a true WRZ.
A .WRZ being called a "Compressed VRML World" means the file is just a VRML world—commonly stored as .WRL, where the extension means *world*—that’s been gzip-compressed for easier storage or earlier web transfer, as VRML’s text-based scene description (objects, textures, lighting, cameras, and sometimes animations) compresses extremely well, resulting in conventions like naming such files .wrl.gz or .wrz.
In everyday use, "compressed VRML world" means you should treat the file as gzip before anything else, after which you’ll normally get a .WRL suitable for VRML/X3D viewers or older tools supporting VRML, and a reliable clue is the presence of gzip’s magic bytes 1F 8B at the start, which confirms it’s truly a gzipped VRML world rather than an unrelated format with a similar extension style.
Exploring a VRML "world" (the .WRL you get from unpacking a .WRZ) shows a scene graph of typed nodes describing visuals and user movement, with Transform/Group constructs managing transform hierarchies, Shape nodes merging geometry such as Sphere with Material/ImageTexture appearance, and standard world components including Viewpoint cameras, NavigationInfo behavior settings, and bindable environment nodes like Background, optional Fog, and Sound.
Interactivity in VRML comes from Sensor nodes like TouchSensor 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.
Describing .WRZ as a "Compressed VRML World" means it’s not its own format but a VRML world (.WRL) compressed via gzip to reduce bandwidth back in VRML’s web days, so the content remains VRML text defining 3D scene elements like geometry, viewpoints, lights, textures, navigation, and interactivity, with .wrz or .wrl.gz indicating that gzip wrapper—a convention the Library of Congress documents—which is why 7-Zip/gzip works and why spotting the 1F 8B signature early in the file strongly suggests true gzipped VRML If you have any concerns relating to where by and how to use
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