Grace Cathedral Gaussian Splat tour

Creative

3d scan tour

SHOW HN2026

263points
60comments
#181of 4,366 in 2026
Top 5%of 2026 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

19 positive, 16 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 7 critical, out of 43 comments about the project. Thread score +0.34.

Performance: 2 for, 5 againstDesign: 5 for, 2 againstIdea: 3 for, 0 againstExecution: 1 for, 0 againstDocs: 1 for, 0 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Stunning level of detail and realism

    From 3 comments
    • absolutely crazy level of detail... in awe
      bytesandbits on HN
    • Hi Vincent, the Sutro Tower 3dgs demo is one I enjoyed a lot. I'd whip it out on my phone and show people saying, 'hey look this is whats possible with 3D Gaussian Splatting'.…
      hdz on HN
    • Unreal. It’s been years since I’ve been here. It’s crazy the fidelity you can capture. Stunning work. Unrelated silly question. Are you the same Vincent Woo who went over the…
      arjie on HN
  • Cutaway Peek feature and cars animation add immersion

    From 3 comments
    • The Peek mode is insanely good, it reminds me of those exploded views of buildings and "how things work" children books. The model seems to be having a hard time with the marble…
      franky47 on HN
    • Did you animate the cars separately? That really did a lot to add to the immersion (and the sound effects too). If nothing moved I think the effect would be significantly…
      hankbond on HN
    • Yes, the cars are separated out and procedurally animated. They're splats, like the rest of the scene. Easily done in PlayCanvas - simple but effective!
      ovenchips on HN
  • Works well on mobile

    From 2 comments
    • This is such a cool immersive experience on mobile that works so well. Great job on this!
      petarb on HN
    • Beautiful work, thank you for sharing it! In case it's useful, given your last sentence, it runs really well on Chrome on Android (on a Pixel 10) but it's a bit glitchy (although…
      nmstoker on HN

Objections

  • Stops working or crashes in Firefox WebGPU on some Windows setups

    From 3 comments
    • Looks good the few seconds it works here. Then stops working and I have to close the tab and reopen for it to work again for another few seconds. Firefox, Windows 11, Nvidia Get…
      magicalhippo on HN
    • Totally hung my Windows 11 machine with Firefox and 32GB of RAM. Ryzen 8745HS (Radeon 780M iGPU).
      gblargg on HN
    • RTX 5090 with 610.62 drivers, Windows 11 25H2, Firefox 153.0b9. FWIW I tried the other one linked here[1] which also throws the same error and stops. Using the same engine…
      magicalhippo on HN
  • On-rails camera hides the Keith Haring altarpiece

    From 1 comment
    • The Keith Haring altarpiece is a really cool surprise! It's unfortunate that this tour makes it very difficult to see. Really not a fan of this "on rails" presentation style. I…
      sublinear on HN
  • Marble floor and some details look low resolution or blurry

    From 2 comments
    • The Peek mode is insanely good, it reminds me of those exploded views of buildings and "how things work" children books. The model seems to be having a hard time with the marble…
      franky47 on HN
    • I had a bit of an amusing time trying to see if I could find my apartment. I could though it was quite blurry :)
      saagarjha on HN

Requests

  • Write more about the capture process

    From 2 comments
    • So beautifully done, its mindblowing. Please blog about your process a bit more.
      skanga on HN
    • absolutely beautiful. I'd love to learn this process and attempt to capture a local rock climbing route. anything you write about the process, or how you learned are very welcome.
      schaefer on HN
  • Tutorial on how to build similar scenes

    From 1 comment
    • - top tier work - let us say i wanted to bring a city to life like this - what does the procedure look like on my end - what inputs, tools, libraries would i need to go about…
      vivzkestrel on HN

Questions

  • How was the clean model produced without artifacts

    From 1 comment
    • Very impressive. How are you managing to produce such a clean model without artifacts?
      squidsoup on HN
  • How the interior and exterior captures were registered

    From 1 comment
    • Combining the interior and exterior captures sounds like the hard part. How did you get the two sets registered to each other?
      satoyoshidev on HN

Alternatives named

  • Superspl.at scene

    From 1 comment
  • Immersive Tech Chateau La Sarraz demo

    From 1 comment
    • Gsplat is indeed the future for graphics. Handling much more detail in mobile hardware spec. Check this work too. (Not mine) https://demo.immersivetech.ch/chateau-la-sarraz/
      suejunghuh0 on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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