On their Discord yesterday morning, Matt Tancik announced the new version along with information on the update:
Support Custom GUI elements in models.
Complete rewrite of viewer backend to use Viser
Add Neus and Neusfacto
TensoRF speedup (~5x)
Bug fixes
Nerfstudio continues to be the go-to platform for those that want to explore with the latest NeRF methods. I myself am extremely excited to check out Instruct-NeRF2NeRF.
Additionally, it's amazing that nerfstudio is now supporting Custom GUI elements. This gives larger flexibility for those working with niche use cases that want to simplify their workflow. The sky is the limit for what features will be added by users, but nerfstudio gave a few examples:
Using text input to modify the rendering
Logging numerical values to the viewer
Using checkboxes to turn off and on losses
Using a dropdown to switch between appearances
It's a smart move from the nerfstudio team that also will help generate user feedback and improvements to the product.
You also might notice that support for modifying time in viewer was removed during the viewer refactor. This functionality will return in in the next version of Nerfstudio.