// 2026.06.03

Phone-Captured Gaussian Splats — Scaniverse into WebXR and Godot

11:00 JST

Our 360-camera Gaussian Splatting workflow took a desktop route — Insta360 capture, SphereSFM, LichtFeld Studio training. This is the phone counterpart: point Scaniverse at a subject, and it trains a 3D Gaussian splat on-device in minutes, for free. For a hackathon, it is the fastest way to get a real-world object or space into an XR scene.

Capture and export

Scaniverse is a free iOS and Android app, operated by Niantic Spatial, with unlimited on-device Gaussian-splat capture. It exports:

  • .ply — the universal splat format, accepted by Lens Studio, SuperSplat, Blender, Unity, and Unreal.
  • .spz — Niantic’s open-source (MIT) compressed splat format, roughly 10× smaller than the equivalent PLY (a 250 MB PLY becomes ~25 MB) with no perceptible quality loss. The spz repository is the reference implementation; SPZ 4 (2026) moved to ZSTD streams and removed the old point-count cap.
  • Meshes (OBJ, FBX, GLB, USDZ) for engine workflows that need geometry rather than splats.

For most XR delivery, export .ply for editors and converters, or .spz where a renderer ingests it directly.

Into WebXR

The shortest path reuses the tool from our earlier article: import the .ply into SuperSplat (open-source, MIT), clean it up, and Publish — the resulting PlayCanvas-powered HTML viewer is WebXR-integrated and tested in AR and VR on Quest 2/3 and Apple Vision Pro. Open the published URL in the headset browser and you are in the scene.

For a code-level build, two renderers stand out:

  • Spark (@sparkjsdev/spark) — a Three.js / WebGL2 3DGS renderer built by World Labs (not Niantic, despite the splat connection). It reads .ply, .spz, .splat, and more, runs in WebXR, and its movement controller is tested on Quest 3. MIT-licensed.
  • Babylon.js — its SPLATFileLoader is the only major WebXR renderer with native .spz ingest (plus .ply and .splat) and spherical-harmonics support, on top of full WebXR.

Device reach: the Quest 3 / 3S Horizon OS browser supports immersive WebXR out of the box. Apple Vision Pro Safari supports WebXR but it is off by default — enable it under Settings → Apps → Safari → Advanced → Feature Flags → WebXR.

Into Godot

Godot’s leading splat addon is godot-gaussian-splatting (GDGS) — MIT, actively maintained, Godot 4.4+. It reads .ply, compressed .ply, .splat, and .sog (convert .spz first), and you render by adding a GaussianSplatNode.

One caveat dominates the Godot path: GDGS targets the desktop Forward+ renderer only — not the Mobile/Compatibility renderer that standalone Quest 3 OpenXR builds require. Its generic VR rendering works for PCVR/Forward+, but there is no documented standalone-Quest-3 support. Godot-on-Quest is otherwise mature (core OpenXR plus the Meta vendor extensions); the limitation is this plugin’s renderer requirement, not Godot’s XR.

Caveats

  • Apple Vision Pro, natively. RealityKit and PolySpatial have no native Gaussian-splat primitive, so a splat is not a drop-in RealityKit object. Godot 4.5 did add visionOS support, but it is windowed-first and AVP does not speak OpenXR, so immersive splat rendering through Godot is not a shipping path. The realistic native route is a Metal renderer such as MetalSplatter; otherwise use WebXR in Safari.
  • Format conversion is the connective tissue. Tools that don’t read .spz (GDGS, mkkellogg’s GaussianSplats3D) need a convert step — Niantic’s browser tool at nianticlabs.github.io/spz, the gsbox CLI, or a round-trip through SuperSplat.
  • Orientation. There is no standard handedness for splat files; Niantic .spz scenes often load mirrored or upside-down and need a rotation or flip on import.
  • Performance. Splat scenes are point-heavy; on standalone headsets, budget the gaussian count and lean on .spz / compressed PLY to hold framerate.
  • Rights. The .spz format is MIT, but rights in the scans you capture are governed by Scaniverse’s Terms of Use — check them before reusing captured content commercially.

Questions? Reach the team via the Contact page.

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