Can you prevent rotation of the vertical axis? I had some luck in https://observablehq.com/d/2f312cd0d55bcc31, but only after the first interaction. The initial orientation and the labels are misaligned.
Orbit controls maintain the up vector, so that the vertical axis stays vertical. In X3DOM this is implemented as `<navigationinfo type=turntable>`.
Here, if you drag the camera along one direction and then another, you'll quickly end up with a walker going up the "walls", or even with an upside down camera position.
So it sounds like you'd like a different navigation mode, as described here:
https://doc.x3dom.org/tutorials/animationInteraction/navigation/
I've always been happy with the default so haven't worried about it but it would be pretty easy to add an option to the show_x3d command. I might do that later in the week.