Web 3D Consortium
From http://www.web3d.org/about/mission/
See also Open Geospatial Consortium
The Mission of the Web3D Consortium
The Web3D Consortium will support a collaborative environment and drive programs to develop and advance an open standards, royalty free 3D interchange format based on XML, along with tools to represent and communicate 3D scenes and objects between diverse authoring and presentation hardware and software on the web, distributed networks and mobile devices..
Strategic Goals in the development of the X3D standard
Overall
Reduce the 3D industry fragmentation by allowing asset interchange that fully preserves asset data between different 3D content creation applications, simulation engines, games, professional and consumer hardware and mobile devices.
Ensure data durability, data interoperability, and provides a way for developers to port data between multiple representations and formats, and define 'high-level' markup tags for application-specific needs.
Specific
Use industry standard XML so that the strength of the format is not dependent on the continued existence of any one organization. Assets exported to or created in X3D will be usable at any future date.
Scalable with profiles that define and componentize feature sets that adapts to the underlying hardware.
Publicly available and royalty free.
ISO approval for core specifications, extensions and amendments
Active association with other standards bodies including the W3C to establish interoperable XML protocols and technologies
Extensible to allow specific functions to be easily added for vertical market applications. Develop conformance test for each of the profiles to insure reliability and consistency of X3D files and applications.
Who We Are
The Web3D Consortium is a non-profit, international standards organization that has spearheaded the development of the VRML 1.0 and 2.0 specifications. Today, the Web3D Consortium is utilizing its broad-based industry support to develop the X3D specification, for communicating 3D on the web, between applications and across distributed networks and web services. Through the well-coordinated efforts with the ISO and W3C, the Web3D Consortium is maintaining and extending its standardization activities. (http://www.web3d.org/about/mission/)
More Information
Standard for converting 2D in 3D, see http://www.fcw.com/ar