I increasingly speak with and observe companies of all sizes and industries whose curiosity has been piqued by radiance field representations. One of the most common questions I hear is: What are the real use cases of this technology?

Today, the most frequent applications I see span AEC/GIS, real estate and hospitality, autonomous vehicles, robotics, eCommerce, telecommunications, federal agencies, and insurance. But even this list feels like a narrow slice of what’s possible. I believe we’re only scratching the surface of where radiance field representations will ultimately be used.

While Gaussian Splatting is emerging as the first bridge to the adoption of radiance field representations, it certainly won’t be the last. Novel representations such as ray traced and voxel based, among several others continue to be published. 

At a time when the conversation around artificial intelligence is unrelenting and omnipresent, I believe it’s critical to have a focused association that champions technologies like radiance fields. Technologies that are not only compelling, but capable of making a large-scale, lasting impact on how consumers, professionals, and robotic systems create, document, and interact with the world.

That’s why I’m proud to help launch ARC3D, the Alliance for Radiance and Computation, alongside Nitin, Steffanie, and Arvin. ARC3D will serve as the first association dedicated to advancing, educating, and supporting the community around radiance field representations and other emerging lifelike 3D technologies.

Over the next three years, I believe we’ll see rapid progress in this space. Progress that will spill over into the broader world of imaging and visual computing. This foundational point marks the beginning of a new era, one that will reshape our daily expectations of how we experience the world around us.

To help foster and accelerate this movement, we are forming an Association whose primary mission is to educate and make these technologies approachable for everyone. Our first initiative will be a free webinar featuring myself and advisor Jonathan Stephens, offering a high-level introduction to radiance field representations. The webinar will take place Thursday at 2pm EST and will be free to join. I hope you’ll consider joining us for this conversation — and following along with the work of ARC.

I’m incredibly excited about the future of imaging, and I hope we’ll all benefit from richer, more lifelike digital representations of the world. Join us, and help shape what comes next.