Apple Pursuing Radiance Fields in Apple Maps

Apple Maps appears to be revolutionizing its 3D visualization capabilities.

In a job posting, Apple has recently opened applications for a research engineer position on the Apple Maps 3D Vision Team. It states directly in the job description that the engineer will be part of a team looking to revamp Apple Maps with radiance field methods and 3D experiences, including both NeRFs and 3D Gaussian Splatting.

Google has also stated repeatedly that they are well in the process of updating Google Maps to feature NeRFs as part of Immersive View. Similar to Google, Apple appears to be targeting the entire world, stating that this job will have a global effect. One has to imagine that these updates will ultimately make their way natively into the Apple Vision Pro headset.

As part of the application, Apple asks for knowledge in differentiable rendering methods (e.g., NeRF, Gaussian Splatting), diffusion models, and strong Python programming skills are crucial. Familiarity with C/C++ or CUDA is a plus.