Niantic’s Scaniverse now has a WebXR app that permits you to view user-created Gaussian splats, together with your personal, in your Quest 3’s net browser.
The Scaniverse cellular app for iOS/iPadOS and Android permits you to scan actual world 3D scenes at no cost, leveraging on-device processing. Now, with the Into The Scaniverse WebXR web site, you may view them, and people created by others all over the world, within the Horizon OS net browser on Quest 3 and Quest 3S.
Niantic claims Scaniverse now has the “world’s largest assortment of splats, created by a neighborhood spanning 100+ nations”, and the WebXR interface has you browse them on a 3D globe interface marking their seize location.
Scaniverse has been round for 3 years now, and initially used conventional 3D scanning methods, leveraging and requiring the LiDAR depth sensor of iPhone Professional and iPad Professional fashions. Two years in the past it was upgraded to work with out LiDAR, leveraging developments in pc imaginative and prescient depth estimation. However in March of this 12 months, Scaniverse bought its most important improve but: switching from a standard 3D stack to Gaussian splatting.
Gaussian splats provide increased constancy scans, with correct lighting and reflections. And whereas earlier Scaniverse scans solely included one particular object, splats embrace a illustration of the background – and this makes them superb for viewing in VR.
Making an attempt out Into The Scaniverse, I discovered that the standard of the topics, the central objects being scanned, could be very spectacular for working in an online browser, whereas the background is considerably decrease element than what you’d discover in Varjo Teleport and Meta’s Horizon Hyperscape Demo. However Varjo Teleport is $30/month, and Horizon Hyperscape is just a demo of six scenes, whereas Scaniverse is totally free. And whereas Varjo Teleport scans take between half-hour and 24 hours, Scaniverse completes in a matter of single digit minutes, a minimum of on a excessive finish telephone.
You’ll be able to obtain the Scaniverse scanning app on the App Retailer for Apple cellular gadgets or the Google Play Retailer for Android cellular gadgets, and you’ll view Scaniverse splats in your Quest 3 or Quest 3S at www.intothescaniverse.com. Visiting that URL on some other system will present a hyperlink to remotely launch Into The Scaniverse in your headset by way of your Meta account, in case you do not really feel like typing the URL inside Horizon OS.
