A .WRZ file is essentially a gzip-compressed VRML world, meaning it’s just a .WRL 3D scene packed to reduce size, since VRML is a text-based format describing full 3D environments—geometry, materials, textures, lights, and sometimes animation—so compressing it works extremely well, and systems label this compressed form as .WRZ or sometimes `.wrl.gz`, with the typical workflow being to unzip it using tools like 7-Zip or `gzip` to get a .WRL file that VRML-capable viewers can load, keeping texture files in their expected folders so they appear correctly.

A reliable sanity check is looking for the gzip marker 1F 8B at the start, which strongly hints the file is a compressed stream consistent with WRZ, and one common mix-up involves RWZ, a format tied to Microsoft Outlook’s Rules Wizard, so email-origin files are likely RWZ, while assets from 3D or web-3D workflows are usually proper WRZ files.

When people say a .WRZ is a “Compressed VRML World,” they mean it’s a VRML scene file—normally a .WRL, where “WRL” literally means *world*—that’s been gzip-compressed to shrink its size for storage or older web delivery, since VRML is a text-based 3D scene format capable of describing full environments with geometry, materials, textures, lights, viewpoints, and sometimes behaviors, and because plain text compresses extremely well, the ecosystem adopted .wrl.gz or .wrz to indicate a gzipped VRML world.

Here is more in regards to WRZ file technical details visit the website. Practically speaking, calling it a “compressed VRML world” tells you to treat the file like a gzip stream first so it can expand into a .WRL readable by VRML/X3D-compatible tools, and one easy technical check is whether the file begins with the gzip signature 1F 8B, which strongly indicates you’re dealing with a real gzipped VRML file and not a different format that only looks similar by extension.

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 Extrusion with Material/ImageTexture appearance, and standard world components including Viewpoint cameras, NavigationInfo behavior settings, and bindable environment nodes like Background, optional Fog, and Sound.

In VRML, interactivity stems from Sensor nodes such as TouchSensor that emit events, animations come from TimeSensor and multiple interpolators that generate timed value changes, and ROUTEs wire eventOuts to eventIns, while Script nodes using VRMLScript/JavaScript (and sometimes Java) add advanced behavior, with Anchor nodes enabling jumps to other worlds or viewpoints, and because VRML separates spatial transform nodes from non-spatial elements like interpolators, NavigationInfo, TimeSensor, and Script, the result behaves like a lightweight interactive application rather than a static mesh.

A .WRZ being a “Compressed VRML World” means WRZ is just a VRML .WRL file gzipped for smaller transfers, keeping VRML’s text-based description of meshes, textures, lighting, viewpoints, navigation settings, and simple interactions intact, but delivered in gzip form and named .wrz or .wrl.gz as noted by the Library of Congress; this is why decompression tools like 7-Zip/gzip open it easily, and why the gzip magic bytes the leading 1F 8B help confirm it’s authentic gzipped VRML rather than an unrelated format.