MN VR and HCI Oct 2025: Gaussian Splatting

Our last meeting of 2025 will be about 50/50 presentation and VR demos of Hyperscape and Gracia.

Intro to Gaussian Splatting - Zach Wendt

Gaussian Splatting (GS) is a great way to render detailed real world scenes and polygon unfriendly content like plants, fences and hair on low power GPUs like Quest and phones. They're also scalable to huge data sets and degrade in a pleasant DOF/impressionistic way when the viewer gets too close or moves to an unscanned area. (Pictured on purpose so it doesn't just look like a photo.)

My brief intro will cover:

• GS pros, cons, history and why it effectively replaced NeRFs for real-time
• Super quickstart using Hyperscape Capture on Quest 3/3S
• Capture tips for good automated results or in tough environments
• Pointers to dev tools and OS projects for Web, Unity, Unreal and Blender
• Active areas of research and eye candy

Quest demos of Hyperscape and Gracia - Amir, Zach, Paul and You!

Meta just put OS 81 into general release last week, which lets all Quest 3 & 3S owners try Hyperscape Capture for themselves. This is by far the fastest and easiest way to capture a high quality radiance field of an environment and move around inside it in VR. This gives extremely strong immersion that will have you (gently) bumping into IRL walls, furniture, pets and children.

If you make a good one, bring your headset (no file sharing yet), or share your experience at the meeting.

For everyone that doesn't have a Quest 3 or 3S, we'll be devoting about half of the meeting to demos of Hyperscape and Gracia (the king of on-device VR rendering and animated gaussian splats.)

Schedule:

• 6:30 Social and setup
• 7:00 Kickoff / announcements
• 7:15 Zach
• 7:52 Demos
• ~8:30 Tear-down, cross the sidewalk to Yardhouse

Attending:

This event will be in person at the REM5 STUDIOS new office in West End only

Park underground and take the central red elevator to ground level, then cross the sidewalk. REM5 STUDIOS is across from Yardhouse. Map below.

About MN VR and HCI:

MN VR and HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) welcomes developers, tinkerers and enthusiasts working with all variety of VR, AR, HCI, hardware hacking, creative coding and interactive art. Members are working on projects with custom displays and lenses, projection mapping, mocap, tiny computers, servos and sensors, interactive art and a wide variety of VR, AR, motion and computer vision applications. If you've only been to our parent group IGDATC meetings, MN VR and HCI is a slightly different format: We aim for smaller group discussions and lots of specific details.