One word about this: VRML. In the first VR hype-wave, a breathtaking amount of money from "major companies" was plowed into a dead-end technology

VRML has little to do with VR in distinct hardware terms, specifically, but declarative interactive 3D, which is why the XML based successor language was called X3D.

For various reasons, open declarative interactive 3d hasn't been as successful as VRML/X3D advocates hoped, but that's largely a separate issue from VR.