Gaussian Splatting Year End Wrap Up
Gaussian Splatting Goes Mainstream | Hollywood, NVIDIA, & Industry Adopt 3DGS | Standards, Software, and Scale in 2025
Hi Everyone!
2025 represented a massive change in people’s awareness for radiance field representations, largely due to the rapid adoption of Gaussian Splatting. In this edition, we’ll take a look at some of the most impactful moments from 2025, paired with a couple thoughts of what we may see in 2026 (it’s going to be a lot).
Gaussian Splatting out in the World
Gaussian Splatting was seriously pushed into everyday workflows and popped up across industries. In 2026, this is going to take another major step forwards, with several corporations that I am aware of planning to either ship or experiment with splats.
Media and Entertainment
Nearly two years in the making, the production of Superman dove directly into gaussian splatting and with its release was the first public launch of dynamic gaussian splatting in a major motion picture.
Gaussian Splatting appeared at the BAFTA’s from Harry Nelder, who captured over 40 of the recent award winners and presenters at this year’s British Academy Film Awards. And then Gaussian Splatting returned to the BAFTAs.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s GTC 2025 Keynote was littered with splats and even prompted him to acknowledge their beauty.
There were TWO Sutro Tower projects that released, highlighting its 50th anniversary. Check out both of them! (First and Second). Niantic SVP Brian McClendon sits down with Fast Company to talk Scaniverse (coincidentally they used my capture for the header!). I sat down with Visual Features editor at The New Yorker, Sam Wolson, to profile how he’s been using gaussian splatting in journalism. The We Know Good Food campaign went live, with fully HDR gaussian splatting. Capturer Matt Hermans broke down his workflow.
HBO show Dune: Prophecy used gaussian splatting to both visualize and prepare for shots, with an exciting future for the radiance field representation. Sony’s AlphaUniverse published an article about Radiance Fields. Did you know JPEG and MPEG have an association? Did you know they’re preparing for radiance field codecs? Check out this joint workshop from JPEG and MPEG on radiance fields from January.
Gaussian Splatting made an appearance at the ITS Fashion Finale. The Auschwitz Birkenau Foundation released Picture from Auschwitz for virtual production and education purposes.
VFX Supervisors if you used gaussian splatting in a project, please message me!
NeRFs:
Instant-NGP 2.0 released, bringing well above real time rendering rates. From what I understand, Instant-NGP could still reduce training times 5X and double the rendering rates in its current form.
Radiance Surfaces is an additional two lines of code into Instant NGP and doubles rendering rates yet again and brings surface reconstruction. It still blows my mind how relatively little attention this got.
Software Updates:
PlayCanvas shipped SuperSplat 2.0 earlier this year and has become the defacto gaussian splatting editor.
Postshot has ended their beta and released their 1.0. The software introduces paid tiers. While many people are upset about the paid tiers, keep in mind that he has made the software free for nearly two years and there is still a free option to use Postshot.
Brush released the first formal update to the hardware agnostic platform since the beginning of the year.
Mark Zuckerberg showed an expanded Hyperscape Capture with new scenes that looking stunning. Apps Splatara and OpenQuestCapture let you use your headset to capture and export data. Spatial Fields launched for the Vision Pro. HTC Viverse Worlds was announced with 3DGS support for interactive 3D. Apple confirms Personas uses Gaussian Splatting, in addition to their Spatial Photos.
World Labs finally launched with their model, Marble. krpano added gaussian splatting support to their viewer. Former Luma employee Jakub Červený released Splatter.app. VRChat added gaussian splatting support thanks to developer Mykhail Moroz.
Babylon.js released V8.0, along with several improvements to their Gaussian Splatting implementation. World Labs released Gaussian Splatting THREE.js renderer, Spark, which was just named one of the most influential libraries of 2025 by GitHub!
RealityScan 2.0 (formerly RealityCapture) got its formal release. COLMAP 3.12 dropped, adding 360 camera support. PyCuSFM released from NVIDIA.
Varjo released V2.0 of Teleport and is offers honestly close to desktop training fidelity. AWS began offering a cloud based solution for various radiance field representations, including gsplat, 3DGRUT, and more! If you’ve ever wanted to 3D print one of your captures, Cysta.ai is making it happen. They can 3D print .plys or .ingp’s with honestly great fidelity.
OTOY has released OctaneRender 2026, with full path traced gaussian splats and their 2027 version will feature splats as a native export from synthetic scenes. Nuke added Gaussian Splatting support in the open 17.0 beta. Volinga updated both their Unreal Engine Plugin and Volinga processing Suite.
Hardware
XGRIDS launched their PortalCam, with increased capture fidelity and retailing for $5K. If you’re looking at buying one and consider using code RADIANCEFIELDS.
I counted 20 SLAM based scanning companies at Intergeo showcasing gaussian splatting support. Hardware is going to get insane in 2026.
Real Estate
Zillow was the first real estate corporation to formally ship gaussian splatting, adding the capability in SkyTours. CoStar Group owned Apartments.com fired back at Zillow, adding their own exterior Gaussian splatting support through Matterport 3D Exteriors.
AEC and Geospatial
I have spent explaining NeRFs and Gaussian Splatting for the past three years. When I stepped into Intergeo 2025, I realized that was no longer necessary. There was extreme awareness of gaussian splatting, with most vendors either offering it already or excited about its impact on the world. Here are some stories of large geospatial and construction companies embracing the radiance field method.
Esri added Gaussian Splatting support in ArcGIS Pro 2.6. DJI added gaussian splatting support to Terra. Pix4D Adds Georeferencing to Gaussian Splatting. Bentley Systems added experimental Tiles and .spz support to their gaussian splatting implementation in iTwin Modeler.
3DVista added gaussian splatting support. Skyline Software Systems Adds Gaussian Splatting Support. Garver, is using radiance fields to success in AEC. NUBIGON began supporting 3DGS.
Autonomous Vehicles
A trio of NVIDIA executives gave the keynote address and announced the NuRec library for gaussian splatting support aimed at Phyiscal AI applications in Omniverse and Isaac Sim.
I profiled Applied Intuition’s NeuralSim, powered by Gaussian Splatting. Tesla has also been using gaussian splatting. Third Dimension Introduces SuperSim, Simulator Built From Reality.
World Foundation Models, such as NVIDIA’s Cosmos, are beginning to shift conversation of radiance fields into the world of simulation. Last year, we spoke to AV Unicorn Wayve’s Chief Scientist about how they use Radiance Fields to power long tail simulations.
Gaussian Splatting on YouTube
Despite being told for years to start a YouTube channel, I didn’t start making content until 2025. I didn’t end up making as much video content as I would like, but there is much more planned for next year. Please consider subscribing to the YouTube Channel!
Here are a collection of videos I made in 2025:
Gaussian Splatting in the Geospatial industry | Google Maps and Radiance Fields |SuperSplat Tutorial | Apple SHARP Tutorial | Meta HyperScape Capture Alternative (Gracia) | XGRIDS PortalCam Review | Arrival Space Vid2Splat | Gaussian Splatting on Mac | Interview with Sanja Fidler (VP, AI NVIDIA) | Infinite Realities 4DGS Profile | Interview with Richard Kerris (VP, M&E NVIDIA)
Research
The amount of papers published about gaussian splatting took a big step forward, with 1,692 on arxiv in 2025. With all the publications and exciting code releases, here were some of my favorite.
Clear-Plenoxels: Floaters free radiance fields without neural networks
EDGS: Eliminating Densification for Efficient Convergence of 3DGS
Efficient Perspective-Correct 3D Gaussian Splatting Using Hybrid Transparency
Einstein Fields: A neural perspective to computational general relativity
Editable Physically-based Reflections in Raytraced Gaussian Radiance Fields
FreeTimeGS: Free Gaussian Primitives at Anytime Anywhere for Dynamic Scene Reconstruction
GSCache: Real-Time Radiance Caching for Volume Path Tracing using 3D Gaussian Splatting
HoGS: Unified Near and Far Object Reconstruction via Homogeneous Gaussian Splatting
Hardware-Rasterized Ray-Based Gaussian Splatting (Cough Meta Hyperscape!)
GEN3C: 3D-Informed World-Consistent Video Generation with Precise Camera Control
GSFix3D: Diffusion-Guided Repair of Novel Views in Gaussian Splatting
LinPrim: Linear Primitives for Differentiable Volumetric Rendering
LODGE: Level-of-Detail Large-Scale Gaussian Splatting with Efficient Rendering
Lyra: Generative 3D Scene Reconstruction via Video Diffusion Model Self-Distillation
MeshSplatting: Differentiable Rendering with Opaque Meshes
MILo: Mesh-In-the-Loop Gaussian Splatting for Detailed and Efficient Surface Reconstruction
PowerGS: Display-Rendering Power Co-Optimization for Foveated Radiance-Field Rendering in Power-Constrained XR Systems
Radiance Meshes for Volumetric Reconstruction
Radiance Surfaces: Optimizing Surface Representations with a 5D Radiance Field Loss
Radiant Foam: Real-Time Differentiable Ray Tracing
Skyfall-GS: Synthesizing Immersive 3D Urban Scenes from Satellite Imagery
Sparse Voxels Rasterization: Real-time High-fidelity Radiance Field Rendering
Spherical Voronoi: Directional Appearance as a Differentiable Partition of the Sphere
StochasticSplats: Stochastic Rasterization for Sorting-Free 3D Gaussian Splatting
TNT-GS: Truncated and Tailored Gaussian Splatting
Triangle Splatting+: Differentiable Rendering with Opaque Triangles
If you would like to read any of the Newsletters from 2025, they are all listed below:
January: Radiance Fields in 2025
February: Several New Radiance Fields Announced!
March: The Beauty of Gaussian Splats
April: Gaussian Splatting April Wrap Up!
May: What’s New in Radiance Fields: Platforms, Research, and Opportunities
June: Triangle Splatting Gaining Steam
July: Zillow, DJI, and Esri? Gaussian Splatting is Arriving Everywhere
August: Superman, SIGGRAPH, and Splats: This Month in Radiance Fields
September: The Latest in 3DGS: Tools, Breakthroughs, and Jobs
October: October in 3DGS: Dune Prophecy, Apple, Tesla, and More!
November: Gaussian Splatting: Industry Moves, Research, and Job Opportunities
December: You’re reading it right now :)
Website Direction
With the added awareness of gaussian splatting and lifelike 3D out in the world, I am shifting the design and content presence of my online presence. When I first began publishing (the three year anniversary was just a couple days ago!), there were very few resources on the internet and so the website was dedicated to changing that. The landscape has changed so much in just the past three months and so the projects I am undertaking are going to reflect that.
There are two concurrent projects that I am undertaking. One that I think would be quite impactful for the general public’s awareness of gaussian splatting and a second moonshot project I believe will attract an extreme amount of attention.
I am now 100% convinced that radiance field representations like gaussian splatting are a fundamental imaging medium and that in 2026 we will see an accelerated shift of imaging into 3D. As a critical mass has begun to be built for 3DGS and how simple it is to capture, process, and distribute, we’re entering a moment where 2D imagery will begin, almost imperceptibly, to feel incomplete.
With all of this in mind, the website and the content that is released will shift towards how radiance fields are being used out in the real world and act as the marketing department for this exciting technology. In addition to also contemplating how content will be created and disseminated over the next 18 months, I am hoping to significantly accelerate its arrival and am taking the steps necessary to facilitate that.
This is going to be an exciting year. Hopefully the industries highlighted in this newsletter showcase the generalized appeal working in lifelike 3D holds.
For the first two and a half years of writing on radiancefields.com, I genuinely assumed nobody was reading the publication. Despite having access to all the analytics and social following, I am a team of one and hear feedback less often than you probably imagine.
Going to conferences this year and meeting people in person was eye opening for me. I am very appreciative of all the readers and supporters of this channel! I am very happy that the website has been a helpful resource for people and to have played a small role in helping spread awareness about lifelike 3D. My goal is to accelerate the move from 2D into 3D for the rest of time, which I now view to be inevitable and relatively imminent.
If you found value in today’s or any of the content from this year, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. There is currently no better way to support me and it tremendously helps to continue to provide content and information.
Michael Rubloff
What a year 😱😱😱😱😱