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Since its evolution in 1994, the most impressive web developer language VRML has been through a lots of modifications and upgrades. In the year 1997, VRML was upgraded for the first time and its name was changed from VRML94 to VRML97 (which is also known as VRML2 or VRML 2.0). This upgraded version of the web language became an ISO standard and was used to design home pages and sites offering 3D chat facilities.

As the web graphics and vectors began to improve, a lot of alternate languages emerged in order to provide better options for virtual 3D modeling and stood in the competition. The various alternatives to the traditional VRML language are:

A) COLLADA: It stands for COLLAborative Design Activity for developing interchangeable file format for 3D applications. This language defines an open standard XML schema which lays down the standards for exchanging the digital files among a number of graphic software applications.

COLLADA documents use XML files having a .dae (digital asset exchange) extension. This language was originally produced to facilitate transfer of digital data from one digital content creation tool to another DCC. This language is used by a number of popular applications such as Maya, 3D Studio Max, Google Earth etc.

B) U3D: Short for Universal 3D, U3D represents the compressed file format for 3D data. It was developed to get a universal standard for exchanging all types of 3D data.

C) X3D: It is a successor of VRML which was developed to enhance the VRML capabilities. X3D features various extensions to VRML such as Humanoid Animation, NURBS, GoeVRML etc. X3D defines a large number of extensions which are used for various purposes. Some of the popular X3D extensions are X3D Core, X3D Interchange, X3D CAD, X3D Geospatial and X3D Immersive.

D) 3DMLW: It is short for 3D Markup Language for Web. This is an XML based standard file format which is used for representing both three dimensional as well as two dimensional interactive content on the World Wide Web. 3DMLW is an open source engine and is licensed under GPL (General Public License).

In order to view and ripe the amazing benefits of 3DMLW, a 3DMLW plug-in or a 3DMLW standalone web browser has to be installed on the PC. The plug-in renders the 3D and 2D effects using the OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) standard. Thus it can be used under cross language, cross platform environments.

3DMLW separated the 2D and 3D objects and uses a text file format based on the XML 1.0 standard.

All the different 3D applications and graphic standards have their own abilities and disabilities. Therefore, one should keep in mind the objective of using these applications, the features of the applications, the cost and scalability factor while choosing one of them. You can also use more than one application and standard simultaneously to have a larger pool of exciting features as most of them supports cross platform functionality as well as backward compatibility.