A .WRZ file is best understood as a gzipped VRML world, where a .WRL 3D scene—built from plain-text instructions describing geometry, materials, textures, lights, and occasional animations—has been compressed tightly for easier sharing, which resulted in the convention of calling such files .WRZ or `.wrl.gz`, and the usual approach is to unzip them with tools like 7-Zip or `gzip` to obtain a .WRL file that VRML-supporting viewers can load, with textures appearing correctly only if their referenced image files stay in the proper folders.A quick way to verify a real gzip file is to check whether it starts with the signature bytes 1F 8B in hex, which strongly indicates a compressed stream consistent with WRZ being a gzipped WRL, and a frequent confusion comes from mixing WRZ with RWZ, since .RWZ is tied to email filtering rule files rather than 3D content, meaning a file from email migration may be RWZ, while something from a 3D or CAD workflow is more likely a true WRZ.Calling WRZ file extraction .WRZ a “Compressed VRML World” refers to a VRML scene file—typically .WRL, the extension meaning *world*—that’s been gzip-packed to lower its size, because VRML is a text-based 3D format capable of defining objects, textures, lighting, cameras, and interactive elements, and its text nature compresses extremely well, leading to the widespread convention of labeling gzipped VRML as .wrl.gz or simply .wrz.In practical terms, “compressed VRML world” also tells you exactly how to handle it: open the file as a gzip stream first, which will usually yield a .WRL you can load in VRML/X3D viewers or import into tools that still understand VRML, and a simple technical hint is the gzip “magic bytes” 1F 8B in hex, which, if present at the start of the WRZ in a hex viewer, strongly suggests it’s a genuine gzipped VRML world rather than some unrelated format with a similar extension.Inside a VRML “world” (the .WRL recovered after decompressing a .WRZ) you’ll usually see a scene graph of typed nodes describing both what appears on screen and how you move through it, with Transform/Group nodes shaping a hierarchy of position/rotation/scale, Shape nodes pairing geometry like Extrusion with material/texture settings via Material and ImageTexture, and additional world elements such as Viewpoint for camera jumps, NavigationInfo for movement style, and bindable environment nodes like Background, Fog, or Sound for ambience.VRML worlds use Sensor nodes like ProximitySensor to produce events, and animations are driven by TimeSensor along with Position/Orientation/Color/Scalar interpolators that output time-based values, all routed together via ROUTE event links, while advanced behavior relies on Script nodes (VRMLScript/JavaScript and sometimes Java) and navigation jumps come from Anchor nodes, and the spec draws a line between transform hierarchy nodes and non-spatial nodes like interpolators, NavigationInfo, TimeSensor, and Script, which is why a VRML world feels like an interactive program instead of just geometry.Describing .WRZ as a “Compressed VRML World” means it’s not its own format but a VRML world (.WRL) stored in gzip form to reduce bandwidth back in VRML’s web days, so the content remains VRML text defining 3D scene elements like geometry, viewpoints, lights, textures, navigation, and interactivity, with .wrz or .wrl.gz indicating that gzip wrapper—a convention the Library of Congress documents—which is why 7-Zip/gzip works and why spotting the 1F 8B signature early in the file strongly suggests true gzipped VRML.