FIG. 1 — The FreeWRL landing world · VRML97
The old Web was made of pages.
Some of us thought it would be made of worlds. Maybe we weren’t finished.
Web preview: X_ITE 16.4.1Native viewer: FreeWRL
FreeWRL is an open-source browser for VRML97 and X3D, the ISO standards for 3D worlds on the Web. It runs natively on your computer. It has been in development since 1998.
- This world
- freewrl-landing.wrl
- Written in
- VRML97 text, 256 lines, 48 KB (11 KB gzipped)
- Holds
- 67 Shape nodes, 4 Viewpoints
- Moves by
- One TimeSensor → two OrientationInterpolators → the cyan ring and a small orbiting marker
- 01Dreamers wanted.FreeWRL needs testers, writers, world builders and people who keep a platform alive.
- 02View source.A world is a text file. You can read this one below.
- 03Change something.Change one number and watch the world change with it.
- 04Build a world.Worlds to turn around and read. Take any of them home and open it in FreeWRL.
View source
The world at the top of this page, in plain text.
#VRML V2.0 utf8
# freewrl-landing.wrl — the FreeWRL mark in a small world: a plaza, a dial, a tower,
DEF Hand Transform { # the FreeWRL mark: eye at the origin, five fingers around it
children [
Transform { # eyeball, flattened so the iris sits on its face
scale 1 1 0.62
children Shape {
appearance Appearance { material Material { diffuseColor 0.62 0.76 0.95 emissiveColor 0.12 0.16 0.24 specularColor 1 1 1 shininess 0.8 } }
geometry Sphere { radius 1.15 }
}
}
Transform { # iris
translation 0 0 0.735 rotation 1 0 0 1.5708
children Shape {
appearance Appearance { material DEF Iris Material { diffuseColor 0.04 0.28 0.85 emissiveColor 0.02 0.14 0.48 specularColor 0.25 0.3 0.4 shininess 0.3 } }
geometry Cylinder { radius 0.64 height 0.06 }
}
}
# … pupil and catch-light …
Transform { # the five fingers
children [
Shape { appearance DEF Glass Appearance { material Material { diffuseColor 0.1 0.62 1 emissiveColor 0.04 0.4 0.78 specularColor 0.9 0.97 1 shininess 0.7 } } }
Transform { # finger 1
translation -2.396 0.509 0
rotation 0 0 1 1.361
children [
Shape { appearance USE Glass geometry Cylinder { radius 0.3 height 2.2 top FALSE bottom FALSE } }
Transform { translation 0 1.1 0 children Shape { appearance USE Glass geometry Sphere { radius 0.3 } } }
Transform { translation 0 -1.1 0 children Shape { appearance USE Glass geometry Sphere { radius 0.3 } } }
]
}
# … fingers 2 to 5 …
]
}
]
}
- Line 1
The first line says which language this is. FreeWRL, X_ITE and every VRML97 browser since 1997 read it the same way.
- Line 6
Transform moves, turns or stretches what is inside it. Here scale 1 1 0.62 squashes a Sphere into the eye.
- Line 8
A Shape joins what a thing looks like (appearance) with what it is (geometry).
- Line 13
The iris is a flat Cylinder, turned 90° (1.5708 radians) to face you.
- Line 24
A finger is a Cylinder with a Sphere on each end. DEF Glass names one appearance; USE Glass reuses it for all five fingers.
- Full file, 48 KB. Save it, then open it in FreeWRL or any VRML browser. Or start with one box.
What FreeWRL is
A native program that opens 3D worlds written in VRML97 and X3D, and lets you walk, fly and look around in them.
Tuomas J. Lukka started FreeWRL in 1998. From about 1999 to 2010, John A. Stewart ran the project at the Communications Research Centre Canada. Many people added to it after that. The last upstream release, 6.7, is dated April 2024.
Today the 6.7 code line is maintained on GitHub. The first results are a native Apple Silicon build for macOS and a Linux build from source. The code is written in C and uses OpenGL. JavaScript in Script nodes runs in the bundled Duktape engine.
- Reads
- VRML97
.wrl, X3D XML.x3d, X3D Classic.x3dv, gzipped too - Version
- 6.7.0-rc.1
- macOS
- macOS 15.0+ on Apple Silicon. Signed pre-release.
- Linux
- Build from source. Tested on Ubuntu 24.04.
- Windows, Android
- Not maintained now. Old upstream builds remain on SourceForge.
- Licence
- GNU LGPL 3.0 or later
- Written in
- C, with OpenGL
From the archive
The project’s own pictures, kept as they were.

FIG. 2FreeWRL — VRML 3D and Beyond

FIG. 3Tic-tac-toe

FIG. 4Space station
Now
Latest release · pre-release
FreeWRL 6.7.0-rc.1
- Published
- 2026-10-03
- For
- macOS 15.0+ on Apple Silicon
- File
- FreeWRL-6.7.0-rc.1-macOS-arm64.zip
