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Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat experience of Sutro Tower, San Francisco

vincentwoo.com

191–198 of 198 posts

Re: Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat experience of Sutro Tower, San Francisco

#191
This is fantastic.

I've been trying to build something myself for biological and heritage captures. Could you elaborate at all on the JS decoder method used or resources that ended up enabling you to make it?

I've been playing with Playcanvas React for the past week, would your method integrate with their platform?

Re: Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat experience of Sutro Tower, San Francisco

#192
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public schools are closing due to lack of enrollment. Transit agencies are cutting back from low ridership and lack of fare revenue. If housing costs were low enough for more people to move in affordably it could be a boon for the city.

Maybe a boon for the city, but is definitively a boon for the people? Or could they be better served by building up another nearby town and connecting it?

There are also a lot of nearby towns already connected by somewhat frequent rail service that could also do well to densify

Re: Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat experience of Sutro Tower, San Francisco

#193
post #191

This is fantastic. I've been trying to build something myself for biological and heritage captures. Could you elaborate at all on the JS decoder method used or resources that ended up enabling you to make it? I've been playing with Playcanvas React for the past week, would your method integrate with their platform?

This application was built on PlayCanvas Web Components: https://github.com/playcanvas/web-components/

It's very similar to PlayCanvas React, but with a fully Web Components-based architecture. You can use the same scripts interchangeably between both frameworks.

Re: Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat experience of Sutro Tower, San Francisco

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it cheaper because the infrastructure is going farther Yes, that's exactly it! > or because every individual is getting less and less of an overburdened commons? No, it's not that at all. Why would common services be overburdened? Everyone still gets their water, sewage, electricity, internet, etc., but it's far cheaper to provide per-person. And with the density you get to build public transit, so people aren't…

>Why would common services be overburdened? Water restrictions? Fatbergs? Brownouts? Congestion? Traffic? Breathing room? Not to mention increasing demand on any inelastic local supply will drive up prices. To my initial point, the upscaling of utilities and infrastructure is often magically handwaved alongside the up-zoning demands. There are real negatives to cramming more and more people into one place!

It’s not actually handwaved when in a lot of cities, fees are charged to property developers to pay for the necessary infrastructure upgrades

Re: Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat experience of Sutro Tower, San Francisco

#195
post #191

This is fantastic. I've been trying to build something myself for biological and heritage captures. Could you elaborate at all on the JS decoder method used or resources that ended up enabling you to make it? I've been playing with Playcanvas React for the past week, would your method integrate with their platform?

This application was built on PlayCanvas Web Components: https://github.com/playcanvas/web-components/ It's very similar to PlayCanvas React, but with a fully Web Components-based architecture. You can use the same scripts interchangeably between both frameworks.

I'm assuming you started working on this before their React release, or was Web Components chosen for a specific reason?

I'm trying to make something that can take in real-time data and also handle some XR/AR if possible as well, but I am pretty ignorant beyond html/css/js.

Re: Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat experience of Sutro Tower, San Francisco

#196
post #150

San Francisco is just so beautiful. There's a serenity to it that I can't quite put my finger on. The way the fog waterfalls over the hills when you take the train in from the south... the view from Sutro. The gum tree trove near the tower. This captured that serenity.

Vincent Woo (the author) also has some lovely time lapse videos of the fog! (And other bits of the city.) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXhk-g2kj99k6FMp2tZ2X...

Re: Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat experience of Sutro Tower, San Francisco

#197
post #191

This is fantastic. I've been trying to build something myself for biological and heritage captures. Could you elaborate at all on the JS decoder method used or resources that ended up enabling you to make it? I've been playing with Playcanvas React for the past week, would your method integrate with their platform?

We're trying to get this upstreamed so I actually expect PlayCanvas to talk about it in the future. Here's the reference (cpu) decoder: https://github.com/vincentwoo/blog/blob/master/3d/sutro_towe..., as well as a gpu one: https://github.com/vincentwoo/blog/blob/master/3d/sutro_towe....

For more information on the format itself you can look at https://github.com/nerfstudio-project/gsplat/blob/main/gspla....

Re: Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat experience of Sutro Tower, San Francisco

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what part is the culprit : the meta quest or the 3D implementation from the website ? On a classis laptop, it behaves well

The Quest's Snapdragon GPU, like most mobile GPUs, uses a tiled rendering [1] architecture. The basic technique for rendering gaussian splats is kryptonite for this architecture, essentially implementing every worse practice for rendering on a mobile GPU: * Tons of overdraw (overlapping splats) * Tons of alpha blending * Millions of splats in the distance generate a lot of tiny triangles resolving to a single pixel *…

It _is_ possible to render incredible and gorgeous scenes using gaussian splats on the Quest platform though, as shown by this tech demo from Meta: https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxGlXM3v93kLg1D9qjJIKmvIYW-vH...
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