Gaussian Splatting in VR has been a hot topic over the past two months. We've seen announcements from industry veterans like Varjo, with their Teleport project, to startups like Gracia, Arrival.space, and most recently, solo developers such as MetalSplatter for the Vision Pro.
Now, another major player in the VR space, ByteDance-owned Pico, is joining the fray with their own Gaussian Splatting solution. However, this is currently just an announcement, and the feature is not yet available. It will be designed specifically for the upcoming PICO 4 Ultra, though there's no information yet on whether the headset will be available in the United States.
For those in regions where the Ultra 4 will be on sale, the wait might not be long, as the Ultra 4 is set to be released on September 2nd, 2024.
What might be more relevant to people in the U.S. is the open-source 3DGS rendering plugin for Unreal Engine 5.3 that Pico is planning to release. Another exciting prospect is the promise of a dynamic Gaussian Splatting demo from the Pico team, expected to arrive later this year.
For those of us based in the U.S., it seems we might miss out on the headset itself, but this development is a positive indicator of the broader industry's embrace of Gaussian Splatting technology.
