Capture
Walk the room. Don’t just plant tripods.
Shoot overlapping photos or video through the exhibit. Structure‑from‑motion recovers camera poses; that sparse scaffold becomes the training set for the splat field.
A continuous exhibit, not a photo hop.
Older virtual tours stitch 360° photos and teleport you between fixed viewpoints. Gaussian splatting rebuilds the gallery as millions of soft 3D Gaussians—so visitors can roam with real parallax and photoreal light.
Represent
Soft ellipsoids, not a stitched sphere.
Each Gaussian carries position, shape, opacity, and view‑dependent color. Together they form a radiance field you can render from novel angles—not a chain of linked panoramas.
Tour
Free roam beats teleport.
Real‑time viewers (WebGL / WebGPU) let guests glide past a vitrine with continuous depth. Panorama tours still win for dollhouse maps and quick measurement—but they hop between fixed eyes.
Decision guide
When splatting earns the virtual tour.
Choose it when the exhibit must look photoreal from any angle—glass, reflections, soft light—not when you only need a reliable, measurable walkthrough.
Good for
- Hero galleriesSignature rooms where fidelity is the product
- Remote previewsLet patrons feel depth before they buy a ticket
- Reflective objectsGlass cases, polished metal, and atmospheric light
- Web‑first deliveryLightweight visual tours without a proprietary host lock‑in
Weak fit
- As‑built measurementSplats are appearance fields, not survey meshes
- Fast dollhouse opsMatterport‑style tools still ship room tags and floor plans faster
- Live changing showsRetraining a field every layout swap gets expensive
- Editable CAD handoffPhotogrammetry meshes remain better for engineering
Pros
- Photoreal novel views with true parallax
- Handles reflections and soft detail better than mesh tours
- Free camera paths feel like being in the gallery
- Open viewers and formats keep delivery flexible
Cons
- Training and capture discipline still matter
- Not a substitute for metric accuracy or BIM
- Authoring tooling is younger than panorama platforms
- Dynamic people and moving props remain hard
Against alternatives
ApproachBest whenVs Gaussian splat
Matterport / panoramasReliable indoor tours, floor plans, measurementsFaster ops; discrete hops instead of continuous volume
Photogrammetry meshEditable geometry, CAD, collisions, 3D printTrue surface; often weaker on glass and soft light
NeRFResearch‑grade radiance without splat speedSimilar idea; 3DGS usually wins real‑time viewing
Game‑engine rebuildYou need interaction, physics, and authored assetsFully controllable; months of art vs hours of capture
360 videoA guided path with cinematic pacingLinear; no free roam or novel viewpoints
Rule of thumb: use panorama platforms when the job is a navigable, measurable space; use Gaussian splatting when the job is a photoreal exhibit people should feel— and pair both when you need wow and floor‑plan truth.