Aras Pranckevičius has released Unity Gaussian Splatting 2.0.0, which renders PLY and SPZ files directly in Unity without an import step.
Since the project was created in 2023, every gaussian splat file had to pass through a "create gaussian asset" workflow that converted it into a chunked, compressed Unity asset, a layout Pranckevičius originally built to explore in memory compression. Version 1.1.2 arrived eight days earlier with an orthographic camera fix, and its SPZ reader still accepted only version 2 files.
In 2.0.0, a GaussianSplatRenderer component points at a .ply or .spz file through a path relative to StreamingAssets, a relative or absolute filesystem path, or a URL. The SPZ reader now covers versions 1 through 4 with spherical harmonics degrees 0 to 3, including SPZ 4, which Niantic Spatial released in May with zstd compressed data streams. The zstd decoder is a C#/Burst port of the MIT licensed TinyZZZ library. Antialiased SPZ files load with a warning, and SPZ extensions are not supported.
Unity Gaussian Splatting 2.0.0 removes all splat editing and cutout tools, including the Export modified PLY button, and Pranckevičius points users to the SuperSplat Editor instead. Most debug render modes are gone except Draw Points, as is the option to sort only every Nth frame.
Sorting is now global, so multiple intersecting splat objects sort and blend correctly against each other. Rendering options moved from each splat object to a single scene-wide GaussianSplatRenderingOptions component. Sorted Blended remains the default. A new Stochastic mode skips sorting entirely, using noisy alpha testing and depth writes, and offers None, Simple Accumulation and Reprojected temporal filters that converge the noise over several frames.
Unity Gaussian Splatting 2.0.0 uses about 104 bytes of runtime memory per splat, close to the old Medium quality preset, and Pranckevičius describes performance as similar. The readme lists the 6.1 million splat bicycle scene at 6.3 ms on an NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti under DX12 or Vulkan. The release fixes compile errors and warnings for Unity 6.0, 6.3, 6.6 and 7.0 alpha, with Unity 2022.3 as the minimum. DX12, Metal and Vulkan are the supported graphics APIs, and DX11 does not work. Pranckevičius has no VR or XR devices, so those code paths went untested.
The readme states that, as of November 2026, Pranckevičius is not planning significant further development. Unity Gaussian Splatting 2.0.0 is available now on GitHub under the MIT license.
