3D rendering OSM for a Gaussian Splats and creating a viewer

I got hinted do this Video about a better Earth 3D view by Gaussian Splats:
https://youtube.com/shorts/q7LMJvGtydA
We have some 3D renderer for OSM, all using 3D meshes and textures.
Could using Gaussian Splats provide a better impression?

Rendering OSM in 3D is limited by the existing tagging, if existing at all. The result will look like using wooden brings until we augment the tagging by textures and assumed figures, like fences or playground markings. Windows are a topic too. Some renderer like StreetView image details. There are train or flight simulators with even more phantasy added to OSM.

Creating and viewing GLB files looks nice but a bit “strong”. Gaussian Splats promises to do it better. Are you interested to try it? What good looking mesh-tiles do we have? OSM2World provides GLB files.

There is an open source converter form GLB to 3DGS:
https://github.com/electronicarts/mesh2splat

There are plenty of viewers. And render/game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine
Would you like to team up for a test project?

Some info:
https://hackaday.com/2025/10/31/learn-what-a-gaussian-splat-is-then-make-one/

1 Like

From what I know, Gaussian Splats is just a technology to recreate 3D scene from 2D images. How it can help us create a better 3D OSM?

2 Likes

Yes, Gaussian Splats are mostly created from 2D images, by calculating the 3rd dimension and placing “lenses” there. But it’s about the same process as photogrammetry which places meshes and textures instead. The real difference is meshes look not that smooth. So our lenses instead of actual OSM meshes could look better too.