Gaussian Splat

Photoreal Gaussian Splat output, as a raw .ply and a compressed .spz, aligned to the map's coordinate frame.

Overview

A Gaussian Splat is the photoreal representation of a mapped space. Where the mesh gives you geometry you can collide with, the splat gives you appearance: view-dependent detail, thin structures, and reflective surfaces that a mesh cannot hold. It is what the View Splat viewer in the Developer Portal renders.

Two formats

Format	Extension	Notes
Raw	.ply	Full precision, uncompressed, the largest file. Opens in standard Gaussian Splat tooling.
Compressed	.spz	Compact form of the same splat, typically around a tenth of the .ply size. Use it for web and mobile viewers where download size and memory matter.

Both files describe the same reconstruction. Pick .ply when you are editing or re-processing the splat, and .spz when you are streaming it to a client.

Which maps have a splat

Gaussian Splats are produced for two inputs:

• 360 video captures (Insta360 .insv), where the splat is generated as part of reconstruction along with the panoramas and the mesh.

• Gaussian Splat uploads (.ply plus poses.json), where MultiSet reconstructs a mesh from your splat and returns the splat itself, re-aligned.

Maps built from .e57 or MatterPak scans produce a mesh and panoramas, but no splat. LiDAR captures from the MultiSet App and Unity SDK produce a mesh only. See Output Asset for the full input-to-asset matrix.

Coordinate alignment

The splat you download is not the file you uploaded. Its coordinates are modified so that the splat shares the map's frame: origin at (0, 0, 0), +Y up, metric scale, sitting exactly on the generated mesh.

Always render the splat returned by MultiSet, not your original upload. The original sits in your reconstruction tool's arbitrary frame, so content placed with VPS poses will not line up with it.

Because the splat, the mesh, and the VPS poses share one frame, you can author against the mesh and render the splat, or the other way round, and everything stays registered. See Coordinate Systems.

Viewing and scaling

Open the map from the Maps list, then click View Splat in the Map Details toolbar:

Map Details toolbar. Open View Splat.

For a 360 video capture recorded without a calibration marker, the Scaling tool inside the splat viewer sets the map's real-world scale: measure something of a known length, enter that length in metres, and confirm. The scale factor applies to the map as a whole, so the mesh and stored metrics move with it. See Map Scale.