Niantic first introduced Into the Scaniverse as a browser-based WebXR experience late last year, allowing users to access 3D scans through their web browsers and VR, with the promise of a more formal Quest app in the future. That has now come to fruition with the launch of Into the Scaniverse for Meta Quest 3 and 3S, offering an immersive way to visit thousands of user-generated 3D scans from over 120 countries.
Scaniverse's captures are crowdsourced from people who are capturing every day using the Scaniverse mobile app. Whether it’s a famous landmark or an unexpected piece of street art, every scene in the Scaniverse is a window into someone’s discovery. With over 50,000 3D scenes and new ones appearing daily, there's a lot to explore.
One of the most compelling aspects of the Scaniverse ecosystem is its instant capture-to-VR pipeline. Scaniverse uses the Radiance Field representation, Gaussian Splatting, to create scans directly on mobile devices, process them on the spot (no WiFi or cellular data required), and upload them instantly. Within minutes, a freshly captured scan can be explored in VR, making it the fastest and most accessible 3D scanning-to-viewing experience available today.
Niantic’s foray into VR with Into the Scaniverse represents a continually growing interest in Scaniverse. With their recent sale of their games division, it bodes well for Niantic to focus on Scaniverse.
This is another step toward a more immersive, decentralized way of documenting and experiencing the world. By leveraging community-driven content and cutting-edge 3D capture technology, Into the Scaniverse offers a glimpse into the future of digital exploration. And with continued updates and expansions on the horizon, this appears to be only the beginning.
Into the Scaniverse can be downloaded from the Quest store, while Scaniverse is available for free on both iOS and Android.
