You’ve heard about Gaussian splats, and you’re pumped to start exploring them in VR—the best way to see them! There are several ways to view splats with your VR headset, depending on whether you’re looking to see your own splats, browse other splats, or see demos of new splatting technology.

Into the Scaniverse has a huge library of splats and the easiest process for viewing your own and other peoples’ splats, while Hyperscape and Gracia give tantalizing glimpses of where splatting technology will go next with 360-degree 3D scenes and dynamic splats with motion. WebXR platform Arrival Space offers a curated look at some of their favorite user-submitted splats.

Into the Scaniverse

Into the Scaniverse is a free Quest app (available in the Meta Horizon store) that gives you an easy way to look at splats in your headset. It’s the first Quest app designed specifically for viewing user-generated splats, and the interface is simple to navigate. Here you can find the world’s largest collection of splats (over 50,000 from 120 countries!), so there’s a boundless amount of exploring you can do.

The mesmerizing music and star-strewn space backdrop set the mood for globetrotting travel. There’s a huge variety in the kinds of splats you can find, which is unique to Into the Scaniverse. Once you start visiting splats, you’ll notice people scan all sorts of things and places, including sculptures, natural features, temples, buildings, cars, lakeshores, malls, holiday decorations, and more. You truly get a sense of the way splatting allows people to share 3D memories of cool places. Other VR apps only show you a few splats at best.

The “Showcase” feature will pull up user-favorite splats, but it’s just as fun to pick spots on the map at random and see what people have found interesting enough to post—you can go from a cave in the forest to a sweeping cathedral in under a minute. You can also “like” splats, which saves them to a folder so you can visit them again later.

It’s also easy to see your own scans. Any splats you make in the Scaniverse mobile app can be uploaded directly to the map from your phone, whether you want to share them publicly or keep them private.

Hyperscape

Meta’s Hyperscape will eventually be an app you can use to scan a room and recreate it in 3D with Gaussian splatting. For now, you can download it for free to preview six demos showing off the breathtaking photorealism that high-fidelity splatting can offer. The objects in the scene often feel so lifelike, it’s tempting to try to reach out and touch them (although you can’t just yet). To add to the sense of standing in another place, Meta includes ambient sound.

Most of the demo spaces are of artists’ studios, so you can see how well splats capture the many different textures and surfaces in the rooms. When you add to that the 360-degree viewability, it genuinely feels like you’re walking into a digital twin of each room. It’s a fun exercise for sparking the imagination—you’re likely to begin thinking of all the other places you would love to virtually visit.

Gracia

Gracia is a Gaussian splatting platform that focuses on dynamic splats, which are video splats (also called 4D splats). For Quest 3 users, there are for now only a few dynamic splats available to view as demos, and they must be downloaded first. It’s worth the effort, though, because it’s amazing to see splats in motion. Like with Hyperscape, it’s interesting to ponder how video splats might be used—virtual classes will be a lot more fun when you can walk around to get a view of a demonstration from multiple angles.

There are also a few still 3D splats you can browse, including some tantalizing food splats that quite frankly made us hungry.

Gracia currently seems to have more functionality for PCVR headsets, including the ability to upload and view your own splatted scenes. You also can’t view any of the user-generated splats in the Quest 3 version of the app, although Gracia promises more to come soon.

Arrival Space

Arrival Space is a user-generated WebXR platform that allows people to organize their 3D and 2D media in portals, which can be navigated by sending your avatar through the doorways (which they call “gates”) in each user’s space. Not all of their content is splats, and they don’t yet have an easy way to browse their full collection of splats while using VR mode on your Quest.

However, if you visit the home page for their immersive version on your Quest browser, there’s a gate to a space with all this year’s best splats nominated for the Polys, an award ceremony that celebrates immersive experiences. It’s a quick way to get a look at some really fun splats, including a virtual tour through the rooms of a gothic manor and some gorgeous views of an old town plaza in Bienne, Switzerland.

Conclusion

The world of splats is growing by the day, and they have the power to connect people with richly detailed digital twins of all the places we find interesting enough to want to show each other. To get the most out of splats, however, you really need to get in there with immersive VR and take a look around—not just a look-at.