Is Geometry Enough for Matching in Visual Localization?
Not on the map. Why?
Abstract (arXiv)
In this paper, we propose to go beyond the well-established approach to vision-based localization that relies on visual descriptor matching between a query image and a 3D point cloud. While matching keypoints via visual descriptors makes localization highly accurate, it has significant storage demands, raises privacy concerns and requires update to the descriptors in the long-term. To elegantly address those practical challenges for large-scale localization, we present GoMatch, an alternative to visual-based matching that solely relies on geometric information for matching image keypoints to maps, represented as sets of bearing vectors. Our novel bearing vectors representation of 3D points, significantly relieves the cross-modal challenge in geometric-based matching that prevented prior work to tackle localization in a realistic environment. With additional careful architecture design, GoMatch improves over prior geometric-based matching work with a reduction of (10.67m,95.7deg) and (1.43m, 34.7deg) in average median pose errors on Cambridge Landmarks and 7-Scenes, while requiring as little as 1.5/1.7% of storage capacity in comparison to the best visual-based matching methods. This confirms its potential and feasibility for real-world localization and opens the door to future efforts in advancing city-scale visual localization methods that do not require storing visual descriptors.
Key facts. Cited by 48 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 53 of its 85 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 24 Mar 2022.
Builds on
53 of 85 references.
References · 53
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50 most cited of 53 All 53 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2022: 1; 2023: 10; 2024: 13; 2025: 14; 2026: 10.
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- 2023Accelerated Coordinate Encoding: Learning to Relocalize in Minutes using RGB and Posescited by 107
- 2023OrienterNet: Visual Localization in 2D Public Maps with Neural Matchingcited by 84
- 2024GLACE: Global Local Accelerated Coordinate Encodingcited by 48
- 2024Map-Relative Pose Regression for Visual Re-Localizationcited by 42
- 2023SNAP: Self-Supervised Neural Maps for Visual Positioning and Semantic Understandingcited by 38
- 2023Differentiable Registration of Images and LiDAR Point Clouds with VoxelPoint-to-Pixel Matchingcited by 35
- 2024The NeRFect Match: Exploring NeRF Features for Visual Localizationcited by 32
- 2024SceneGraphLoc: Cross-Modal Coarse Visual Localization on 3D Scene Graphscited by 29
- 2023DGC-GNN: Leveraging Geometry and Color Cues for Visual Descriptor-Free 2D-3D Matchingcited by 17
- 2023FocusTune: Tuning Visual Localization through Focus-Guided Samplingcited by 16
- 2025R-SCoRe: Revisiting Scene Coordinate Regression for Robust Large-Scale Visual Localizationcited by 16
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36 more
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- 2024Learning to Produce Semi-dense Correspondences for Visual Localizationcited by 10
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- 2023Learning Accurate Template Matching with Differentiable Coarse-to-Fine Correspondence Refinementcited by 9
- 2024Differentiable Product Quantization for Memory Efficient Camera Relocalizationcited by 9
- 2025A Guide to Structureless Visual Localizationcited by 9
- 2025ACE-G: Improving Generalization of Scene Coordinate Regression Through Query Pre-Trainingcited by 8
- 2023Privacy-Preserving Representations are not Enough -- Recovering Scene Content from Camera Posescited by 7
- 2022Privacy-Preserving Visual Localization with Event Camerascited by 6
- 2023Pix2Map: Cross-modal Retrieval for Inferring Street Maps from Imagescited by 6
- 2024Obfuscation Based Privacy Preserving Representations are Recoverable Using Neighborhood Informationcited by 6
- 2025GSVisLoc: Generalizable Visual Localization for Gaussian Splatting Scene Representationscited by 5
- 2024Improved Scene Landmark Detection for Camera Localizationcited by 4
- 2023DAC: Detector-Agnostic Spatial Covariances for Deep Local Featurescited by 3
- 2025A2-GNN: Angle-Annular GNN for Visual Descriptor-free Camera Relocalizationcited by 3
- 2025EdgeRegNet: Edge Feature-based Multimodal Registration Network between Images and LiDAR Point Cloudscited by 3
- 2025Can we make NeRF-based visual localization privacy-preserving?cited by 3
- 2025ColabSfM: Collaborative Structure-from-Motion by Point Cloud Registrationcited by 2
- 2024STT: Stateful Tracking with Transformers for Autonomous Drivingcited by 1
- 2024EEPNet: Efficient Edge Pixel-based Matching Network for Cross-Modal Dynamic Registration between LiDAR and Cameracited by 1
- 2024Enhancing Scene Coordinate Regression with Efficient Keypoint Detection and Sequential Informationcited by 1
- 2026ImLoc: Revisiting Visual Localization with Image-based Representationcited by 1
- 2025Geometry-aided Vision-based Localization of Future Mars Helicopters in Challenging Illumination Conditionscited by 0
- 2025A-SCoRe: Attention-based Scene Coordinate Regression for wide-ranging scenarioscited by 0
- 2025EEPNet-V2: Patch-to-Pixel Solution for Efficient Cross-Modal Registration between LiDAR Point Cloud and Camera Imagecited by 0
- 2025MACE: Mixture-of-Experts Accelerated Coordinate Encoding for Large-Scale Scene Localization and Renderingcited by 0
- 2025Visible Structure Retrieval for Lightweight Image-Based Relocalisationcited by 0
- 2026PlanaReLoc: Camera Relocalization in 3D Planar Primitives via Region-Based Structure Matchingcited by 0
- 2026Privacy-Preserving Structureless Visual Localization via Image Obfuscationcited by 0
- 2026Revisiting Geometric Obfuscation with Dual Convergent Lines for Privacy-Preserving Image Queries in Visual Localizationcited by 0
- 2026Angle-I2P: Angle-Consistent-Aware Hierarchical Attention for Cross-Modality Outlier Rejectioncited by 0
- 2026Seeing Through the Weights: Privacy Leakage in Scene Coordinate Regressioncited by 0
- 2026GeoMix: Descriptor-Free Visual Localization via Global Context and Multi-Detector Trainingcited by 0
- 2026Ex-Sim(3)-Reg: 2D-3D Correspondence Pruning via Extended Sim(3) Registrationcited by 0
- 2026OCA: ODE-Driven Cross-Attention for Image-to-Point-Cloud Registrationcited by 0
- 2026OCA: ODE-Driven Cross-Attention for Image-to-Point-Cloud Registration29 Sep 2026
- 2026Ex-Sim(3)-Reg: 2D-3D Correspondence Pruning via Extended Sim(3) Registration28 Aug 2026
- 2026GeoMix: Descriptor-Free Visual Localization via Global Context and Multi-Detector Training2 Jul 2026
- 2026Seeing Through the Weights: Privacy Leakage in Scene Coordinate Regression30 Jun 2026
- 2026Angle-I2P: Angle-Consistent-Aware Hierarchical Attention for Cross-Modality Outlier Rejection6 May 2026
- 2026Revisiting Geometric Obfuscation with Dual Convergent Lines for Privacy-Preserving Image Queries in Visual Localization24 Apr 2026
- 2026Privacy-Preserving Structureless Visual Localization via Image Obfuscation13 Apr 2026
- 2026PlanaReLoc: Camera Relocalization in 3D Planar Primitives via Region-Based Structure Matching21 Mar 2026
- 2026VGG-T3: Offline Feed-Forward 3D Reconstruction at Scale26 Feb 2026
- 2026ImLoc: Revisiting Visual Localization with Image-based Representation7 Jan 2026
- 2025Visible Structure Retrieval for Lightweight Image-Based Relocalisation16 Nov 2025
- 2025MACE: Mixture-of-Experts Accelerated Coordinate Encoding for Large-Scale Scene Localization and Rendering16 Oct 2025
36 more
- 2025ACE-G: Improving Generalization of Scene Coordinate Regression Through Query Pre-Training13 Oct 2025
- 2025Can we make NeRF-based visual localization privacy-preserving?26 Aug 2025
- 2025GSVisLoc: Generalizable Visual Localization for Gaussian Splatting Scene Representations25 Aug 2025
- 2025Gaussian Splatting Feature Fields for Privacy-Preserving Visual Localization31 Jul 2025
- 2025A Guide to Structureless Visual Localization24 Apr 2025
- 2025ColabSfM: Collaborative Structure-from-Motion by Point Cloud Registration21 Mar 2025
- 2025EEPNet-V2: Patch-to-Pixel Solution for Efficient Cross-Modal Registration between LiDAR Point Cloud and Camera Image19 Mar 2025
- 2025EdgeRegNet: Edge Feature-based Multimodal Registration Network between Images and LiDAR Point Clouds19 Mar 2025
- 2025A-SCoRe: Attention-based Scene Coordinate Regression for wide-ranging scenarios18 Mar 2025
- 2025A2-GNN: Angle-Annular GNN for Visual Descriptor-free Camera Relocalization27 Feb 2025
- 2025Geometry-aided Vision-based Localization of Future Mars Helicopters in Challenging Illumination Conditions13 Feb 2025
- 2025R-SCoRe: Revisiting Scene Coordinate Regression for Robust Large-Scale Visual Localization2 Jan 2025
- 2024Enhancing Scene Coordinate Regression with Efficient Keypoint Detection and Sequential Information9 Dec 2024
- 2024LoD-Loc: Aerial Visual Localization using LoD 3D Map with Neural Wireframe Alignment16 Oct 2024
- 2024EEPNet: Efficient Edge Pixel-based Matching Network for Cross-Modal Dynamic Registration between LiDAR and Camera28 Sep 2024
- 2024Obfuscation Based Privacy Preserving Representations are Recoverable Using Neighborhood Information17 Sep 2024
- 2024Differentiable Product Quantization for Memory Efficient Camera Relocalization22 Jul 2024
- 2024GLACE: Global Local Accelerated Coordinate Encoding6 Jun 2024
- 2024STT: Stateful Tracking with Transformers for Autonomous Driving30 Apr 2024
- 2024Map-Relative Pose Regression for Visual Re-Localization15 Apr 2024
- 2024SceneGraphLoc: Cross-Modal Coarse Visual Localization on 3D Scene Graphs30 Mar 2024
- 2024Fully Geometric Panoramic Localization29 Mar 2024
- 2024The NeRFect Match: Exploring NeRF Features for Visual Localization14 Mar 2024
- 2024Learning to Produce Semi-dense Correspondences for Visual Localization13 Feb 2024
- 2024Improved Scene Landmark Detection for Camera Localization31 Jan 2024
- 2023Differentiable Registration of Images and LiDAR Point Clouds with VoxelPoint-to-Pixel Matching7 Dec 2023
- 2023FocusTune: Tuning Visual Localization through Focus-Guided Sampling6 Nov 2023
- 2023DGC-GNN: Leveraging Geometry and Color Cues for Visual Descriptor-Free 2D-3D Matching21 Jun 2023
- 2023SNAP: Self-Supervised Neural Maps for Visual Positioning and Semantic Understanding8 Jun 2023
- 2023Accelerated Coordinate Encoding: Learning to Relocalize in Minutes using RGB and Poses23 May 2023
- 2023DAC: Detector-Agnostic Spatial Covariances for Deep Local Features20 May 2023
- 2023Privacy-Preserving Representations are not Enough -- Recovering Scene Content from Camera Poses8 May 2023
- 2023OrienterNet: Visual Localization in 2D Public Maps with Neural Matching4 Apr 2023
- 2023Learning Accurate Template Matching with Differentiable Coarse-to-Fine Correspondence Refinement15 Mar 2023
- 2023Pix2Map: Cross-modal Retrieval for Inferring Street Maps from Images10 Jan 2023
- 2022Privacy-Preserving Visual Localization with Event Cameras4 Dec 2022
- 2023Accelerated Coordinate Encoding: Learning to Relocalize in Minutes using RGB and Posescited by 107
- 2023OrienterNet: Visual Localization in 2D Public Maps with Neural Matchingcited by 84
- 2024GLACE: Global Local Accelerated Coordinate Encodingcited by 48
- 2024Map-Relative Pose Regression for Visual Re-Localizationcited by 42
- 2023SNAP: Self-Supervised Neural Maps for Visual Positioning and Semantic Understandingcited by 38
- 2023Differentiable Registration of Images and LiDAR Point Clouds with VoxelPoint-to-Pixel Matchingcited by 35
- 2024The NeRFect Match: Exploring NeRF Features for Visual Localizationcited by 32
- 2024SceneGraphLoc: Cross-Modal Coarse Visual Localization on 3D Scene Graphscited by 29
- 2023DGC-GNN: Leveraging Geometry and Color Cues for Visual Descriptor-Free 2D-3D Matchingcited by 17
- 2023FocusTune: Tuning Visual Localization through Focus-Guided Samplingcited by 16
- 2025R-SCoRe: Revisiting Scene Coordinate Regression for Robust Large-Scale Visual Localizationcited by 16
- 2026VGG-T3: Offline Feed-Forward 3D Reconstruction at Scalecited by 14
12 most cited of 47 All 47 (JSON)
- 2026OCA: ODE-Driven Cross-Attention for Image-to-Point-Cloud Registration29 Sep 2026
- 2026Ex-Sim(3)-Reg: 2D-3D Correspondence Pruning via Extended Sim(3) Registration28 Aug 2026
- 2026GeoMix: Descriptor-Free Visual Localization via Global Context and Multi-Detector Training2 Jul 2026
- 2026Seeing Through the Weights: Privacy Leakage in Scene Coordinate Regression30 Jun 2026
- 2026Angle-I2P: Angle-Consistent-Aware Hierarchical Attention for Cross-Modality Outlier Rejection6 May 2026
- 2026Revisiting Geometric Obfuscation with Dual Convergent Lines for Privacy-Preserving Image Queries in Visual Localization24 Apr 2026
- 2026Privacy-Preserving Structureless Visual Localization via Image Obfuscation13 Apr 2026
- 2026PlanaReLoc: Camera Relocalization in 3D Planar Primitives via Region-Based Structure Matching21 Mar 2026
- 2026VGG-T3: Offline Feed-Forward 3D Reconstruction at Scale26 Feb 2026
- 2026ImLoc: Revisiting Visual Localization with Image-based Representation7 Jan 2026
- 2025Visible Structure Retrieval for Lightweight Image-Based Relocalisation16 Nov 2025
- 2025ACE-G: Improving Generalization of Scene Coordinate Regression Through Query Pre-Training13 Oct 2025
12 newest of 47 All 47 (JSON)