Over the past year, we’ve seen a growing interest from our partners to document spaces digitally. While traditional mapping solutions have served their purpose, the rapid advancements in Gaussian Splatting technology are changing how we can capture and recreate real-world environments on the web. This exciting development makes it increasingly feasible to bring immersive digital twins of physical spaces directly to your browser.

Our team had the privilege of collaborating with the team at the xRStories lab on through their residency program.  To prototype and develop the process of capturing spaces and making them accessible through the web

– Gaussian Splat of a rock in the environment

How Do You Capture a Space with Gaussian Splatting?

The core technology we explored at the xRStories lab is Gaussian Splatting. Unlike traditional 3D modelling or photogrammetry, which often rely on mesh creation or dense point clouds, Gaussian Splatting utilises a novel approach. Imagine an environment being composed of countless tiny, transparent 3D “splats” or ellipses, each with its own position, orientation, color, and opacity. These individual Gaussian splats are used to reconstruct the scene from various viewpoints and, crucially, enables viewers to explore the captured environment fluidly from any angle, offering a truly immersive experience that goes beyond static 360-degree photos or videos.

The process of bringing a real-world space into this digital format involves several key steps:

Exploring the technology

We kicked off our residency with the xRStories team by heading to Homestead Park, a location rich with natural foliage and a distinct ambient soundscape. Our goal was to capture a detailed, organic green space to push the boundaries of the technology in recreating complex environments.

Our initial tests yielded some rather abstract results that didn’t quite produce a true representation of the space. However, these early explorations were invaluable learning opportunities. Through trial and error, we discovered a few key insights crucial for achieving more accurate and lifelike captures:
Extensive Image Overlap is Key: For the algorithm to accurately reconstruct the scene, a substantial amount of overlap between the captured images is important.
Steady Camera for Sharpness: Motion blur can significantly degrade the quality of the capture. Maintaining a steady camera throughout the recording process is essential to ensure crisp, clear source images for optimal reconstruction.
Video Simplifies Overlap Management: While individual photos can be used, capturing the scene via video simplifies the process of ensuring sufficient overlap and a consistent capture path.

Developing and refining the process

To refine our process with our new workflow we headed back out with the team to test capture a number of additional sample recordings.

Prototype: Accessible Spaces on the web

The final output of our residency was the development of a prototype that combined our in-house web development ability with our GSplat capture. The result is an interactive environment that anyone can load in their web browser and explore, offering a truly accessible and immersive experience.
We believe this technology has great potential for various applications. Imagine the ability to:
Document spaces in time: Preserve historical locations, artistic installations, or transient events as fully explorable digital archives.
Access restricted or remote locations: Offer virtual tours of spaces that are physically inaccessible to the public due to safety, preservation, or privacy concerns.
Make inaccessible spaces open for all: Create inclusive experiences for individuals with mobility challenges, allowing them to virtually visit and navigate environments they might otherwise be unable to experience.


This opens up new avenues for cultural institutions, real estate developers, tourism boards, and many other organisations to connect with their community in more engaging ways.

What do you think?

If the idea of bringing real-world spaces and moments to life digitally for your organisation sounds interesting, we’d love to chat. Feel free to get in touch with us at hello@unitedbydesign.co and let’s have a chat.

Credits: Thanks to xRStories for hosting us for the week, and thank you to Hewitt & Walker for both documenting the process and lending equipment.