You can only consider WebVR similar to VRML if you know nothing about it. Despite the name VRML wasn't really about VR. It was about 3D for the web. VRML failed but 3D for the web has been solved. WebGL works great today: https://www.google.com/maps/@19.8560519,-86.191051,22963938m...
Sure it was about VR, even though it didn't require the (then extraordinarily expensive) goggles and gloves; it was about a declarative means of specifying VR content. That the common clients for it were limited to fishtank interaction with monitor, mouse, and keyboard is irrelevant to what it was about.
> VRML failed but 3D for the web has been solved.
WebGL doesn't actually solve the problem VRML existed to solve (though it underlies many modern solutions, like X3DOM implementations.)
Well, obviously GPU hardware has become a lot cheaper, more powerful, and more widely available in the last 20 years. VR display hardware hasn't become ubiquitous in the same way, but it's still way beyond what was previously available to consumers.
Also, VRML took the approach of trying to build all kinds of special-purpose functionality into the platform (see e.g. http://gun.teipir.gr/VRML-amgem/spec/part1/concepts.html#Eve... or http://gun.teipir.gr/VRML-amgem/spec/part1/concepts.html#Int...). This is similar to what old-fashioned fixed-function OpenGL used to look like. Over the years, graphics APIs have evolved to become more general-purpose and programmable. And we've seen a similar trend with browser APIs: consider how Service Workers have replaced the old AppCache, or how MediaSource has replaced proprietary video streaming plugins. The design of WebGL/WebVR is a lot more flexible, and better suited to the modern web, than VRML was.
Obviously this doesn't mean that VR is going to be a huge success this time around, but it's also not fair to assume that nothing has changed in the last 20 years.
VRML was amazing. I distinctly remember the hours upon hours upon hours I spent playing on CyberTown[1]. It was based on an Internet Explorer ActiveX plugin for VRML (named Blaxxun), providing a full 3D environment... and this was in the late 90's / early 2000's.
For its time it was incredible, far beyond the graphics for any multiplayer world I'd seen up til then - especially considering it was in the browser. It was essentially 3D chat in common map areas, with your own home like Geocities. You could upload your own assets for your avatar, including your appearance and the somewhat annoying but awesome and little-known functionality to have a sound (wav file if I recall correctly) to play to other players based on your proximity to them. I went all-in with a ghost avatar, and a funny/spooky ghost sound. The hours I spent roaming just to get the "what was that sound?!" reaction from other players was priceless.
I will remember that experience fondly for as long as I live. I was a gentle phantasm gleefully haunting a 3D world. Great memories, though more specific details are a faint whisper.
Only VRML 1.0 was static. VRML 2.0 and VRML97 included animation and events (user and time triggered). As I recall you could program fairly rich behaviours using java or javascript, with collision detection.
> It's weird to see the last VR hype cycle repeating itself in such detail.
VR, VMs & cloud computing, automation "taking all our jobs". We've been running the same course since at least the 1960s. Everything that's new is old already.
Even the space race has been restarted. Maybe this should be a new Olympic Games category - "Set foot on the moon, by starting from first principals."
Pretty sure Wernher von Braun isn't available any more though [x], in fact I think you're going to have a real hard time with many of the other principals. Principles though seem to be potentially an easier route.
Either way, I'd back that category in a heartbeat, though not sure if it could be completed in the duration of a normal games cycle... In a way it's been started already with the google lunar x prize [o] though that's been running a little longer than your typical games...
What killed VRML is that when it was being pushed, clients having internet bandwidth for complex models was rare, and clients having desktop horsepower for even fishtank-style interaction with even simple models was also rare, which limited it's utility.
Declarative VR content on the web has a lot better infrastructure across the board now; the context is not much like 1995.
Seriously though, has everybody forgotten VRML? It's weird to see the last VR hype cycle repeating itself in such detail.