Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat tour of grace cathedral, San Francisco
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Re: Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat tour of grace cathedral, San Francisco
#2Hi Vincent, the Sutro Tower 3dgs demo is one I enjoyed a lot. I'd whip it out on my phone and show people saying, 'hey look this is whats possible with 3D Gaussian Splatting'. And this Grace Catherdral splat is stunning. It showcases one of my favorite parts of 3dgs which is reflections and glass. The color and essence of the stained glass comes through so well.
The cutaway Peek feature is like a sci fi version of an Stephen Biesty's Incredible Cross-Sections book. Incredible work!
Re: Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat tour of grace cathedral, San Francisco
#3Very impressive. How are you managing to produce such a clean model without artifacts?
Re: Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat tour of grace cathedral, San Francisco
#4Extraordinary. Thank you for sharing. If there would ever be the possibility of seeing European Gothic cathedrals in this manner, that would also be really cool.
Re: Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat tour of grace cathedral, San Francisco
#5From OP's prior work scanning Sutro Tower in SF: https://vincentwoo.com/2025/02/18/sutro-tower-in-3d/.
> This scan is made possible by recent advances in Gaussian Splatting. This is an emerging technology that lets us quickly create very detailed models just from photographs. For this model (or splat, as we call them), my friend Daylen and I flew our drones around Sutro Tower at a respectful distance for an afternoon until we had collected a few thousand photographs.
> I then aligned these pictures in free software called RealityCapture. Alignment is the process that teaches the computer that a bunch of points in different images all actually correspond with the same point in real life. Then I used another piece of free software called gsplat to produce the 3D model itself.
I'm assuming this was done similarly. Very cool.
Re: Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat tour of grace cathedral, San Francisco
#6absolutely crazy level of detail... in awe
Re: Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat tour of grace cathedral, San Francisco
#7Extraordinary. Thank you for sharing. If there would ever be the possibility of seeing European Gothic cathedrals in this manner, that would also be really cool.
Don't miss this one: https://superspl.at/scene/c67edb74
Re: Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat tour of grace cathedral, San Francisco
#8Reminded me of a VRML demonstrator inside Notre Dame from decades ago. Different approach, similar outcome. (it used surface texture mapping inside a game engine from my memory)
A lot more architecture would benefit from being available like this splat model. The Pharonic tombs which you can visit in google/other virtual tourism are good, but this is also good!
Re: Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat tour of grace cathedral, San Francisco
#9Very impressive. How are you managing to produce such a clean model without artifacts?
I spent a lot of time hand-masking out inconsistencies between shoots. I waited too long between sessions and they actually built out an entirely new section of ceiling. PPISP guidance in splatting also helps a lot in solving sensor inconsistencies between the many different cameras and lighting conditions that went into the source dataset.
Re: Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat tour of grace cathedral, San Francisco
#10Hi Vincent, the Sutro Tower 3dgs demo is one I enjoyed a lot. I'd whip it out on my phone and show people saying, 'hey look this is whats possible with 3D Gaussian Splatting'. And this Grace Catherdral splat is stunning. It showcases one of my favorite parts of 3dgs which is reflections and glass. The color and essence of the stained glass comes through so well. The cutaway Peek feature is like a sci fi version of an…
Thank you!