About six weeks ago, Varjo’s Teleport launched V2.0, which saw a significant increase in reconstruction fidelity that puts them right at the top of cloud based offerings. In the weeks since then, there have been smaller adjustments and improvements pushed out to their pipeline, but today they’re introducing a noticeable improvement, Level of Detail support.
This dynamically adapts 3D scene quality to the viewer's device or scene that they’re looking at. For instance, if a user is examining a small object or an air base, Teleport now makes sure your captures load fast, look sharp, and stays smooth to navigate. For me, this is a welcome addition, as some of my captures have been a bit dense with gaussians.
Scenes are broken down during training into multiple resolutions. As you move through a capture, your device intelligently streams in only the detail it needs. All of this happens in real time, in your browser, with no plugins and no downloads.
The LOD functionality is already being rolled out and can be found by opening any Teleport scene and using the quality selector in the viewer. It will intelligently adapt to your device and viewing position in real time. The "Best Quality" option uses WebGPU and contains the LOD system, while the "Broader Compatibility" option with WebGL, currently does not. To take full advantage of the potential quality, users will need to have a WebGPU compatible browser such as Chrome. Additionally for .plys uploaded to Teleport, the Varjo team is automatically creating the LOD.
LOD is currently available on desktop browsers, with mobile support expected soon. Teleport allows new users five free captures before moving over to a paid subscription, but is currently the best cloud based implementation, in my opinion.
To learn more about the newest addition, check out Varjo's official blog.
