Octave has released Alto 2026.1, which adds support for gaussian splats to its geospatial visualization software.
Alto is the new name for Octave Intelligence's former Luciad products. Octave's announcement says the update turns "photos and scans into lifelike 3D models of real places" for mission planning, training and infrastructure monitoring, but does not say which Alto products receive it. The developer documentation for LuciadCPillar 2026.1, now Alto Universal, states that it consumes gaussian splatting data as OGC 3D Tiles with glTF payloads, decoded through Ogc3DTilesModelDecoder and drawn in a TileSet3DLayer. That is the same pairing Cesium uses for hierarchical LOD on gaussian splats, and the format Bentley added as an export in iTwin Capture Modeler. The LuciadCPillar documentation does not name a glTF extension for the splat payload, while the LuciadRIA sample loads tilesets "containing SPZ or glTF with SPZ payloads."
Alto Universal styles splats through a GaussianSplatsStyle with enableDepth, an opacity cutoff, a resolution scale and a high precision colors toggle. Depth supports navigation, measurement and occlusion, and the documentation warns that generating it can be intensive. Raising the opacity cutoff by 0.05 to 0.1 substantially improves frame rate while visibly reducing image quality. A quality factor on the layer, 1.0 by default, sets how much tile detail loads based on the scale information in the source data. Recommended profiles run from Low for mobile devices to Ultra for gaming laptops.
A browser sample for LuciadRIA, now Alto Browser, loads a splat capture of the KU Leuven Museum of Zoology. The sample demonstrates expression based styling of splat color, position, scale and visibility, along with depth rendering and quality presets.
The other renames are Alto Lightspeed, formerly LuciadLightspeed, and Alto Server, formerly LuciadFusion. Alto 2026.1 also adds live drone and camera video on 2D maps and 3D terrain, and support for NATO's newest standards for military map symbols and battle plans. Octave has not published pricing.
Octave announced Alto 2026.1 in a press release.
