i feel like a lot of folx don't really understand what VR was like back then, so let me give you some context:

in the early 90s, VR was really hot shit. VPL had invented a bunch of incredible VR technology, including VR surgery, VR musical instruments, VR headsets

and VR data gloves. this was all 1980s tech, it was all very expensive and not available to the average person.

but in the very late 80s and early 90s, we suddenly got a bunch of commercially available, home consumer VR: the Powerglove and Virtual Boy, Sega VR

you could even go to art shows and computer game arcades in strip malls and play PC games there, some of which were VR games

VR was everywhere and and moving fast. it was clearly the future

in the middle of all of this, the web was emerging on the scene

this was the Old Good Web, not the New Bad Web, back when websites were just a collection of web pages and you could host them in your own home for anyone to visit, without needing a big corporation

it was a dream of doing for VR what the web generally was doing for text and images and other content

no company you downloaded the VRML World from, no company to tell you what you could make or who you could share it with

it was a virtual world you controlled on your own site

not only could you create your own virtual home PAGE, you could now make your own virtual home WORLD, another reality that you could invite anyone into

but by 1997 it was clear that the basic VRML model was inadequate

the web just wasn't keeping up with the dream, and so corporations swooped in to fill that void

and because they had more resources to devote to their closed, proprietary experiences, those were much better experiences

we never properly solved the fundamental problems of the web -- IP addresses constrained home hosting, authoring of virtual experiences is extremely high barrier to entry

even the original VRML-style approach to static VR is functionally dead, despite being rebranded as X3D

you can no longer hand write some simple VR code, toss it up on your home page that you host out of your living room, and have people experience your 3D worlds

you can't even just put VRML into any old webpage now, no matter who hosts it

the utopia of the people's VR is dead

but all of the aspects of the early web that drove developers to make things that were supposed to be approachable to people are now gone

there is no push to create new ways to author virtual worlds, to make them compatible with the latest VR technology, etc.