kvrml

KVRML is a derivative of the VRML standard designed to describe interactive 3D scenes for the web. It emerged in the late 1990s as part of the VRML ecosystem, offering extensions intended to improve interactivity and performance on early web platforms.

Like VRML, KVRML describes a scene graph comprised of nodes that represent geometry, appearance, lights, viewpoints, and navigation. It was intended to be used with existing VRML authoring tools and players, and it supported time-based events and scripting for interactive behavior. The language borrowed concepts from VRML such as DEF/USE naming and ROUTE event routing, while adding its own extensions.

Development and use were limited; KVRML saw relatively few implementations and modest uptake among developers. As later standards such as X3D emerged to succeed VRML, and as web technologies for 3D shifted toward WebGL and real-time engines, KVRML gradually fell out of use.

Today, KVRML is largely of historical interest. Documentation and archival samples exist in vintage VRML repositories, but modern 3D web tools rarely, if ever, support it.

See also: VRML, X3D, WebGL, 3D web technologies.