# Neural LiDAR Fields for Novel View Synthesis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.01643 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.01643/

## Key facts

- Cited by 67 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 42 of its 63 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 May 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 42)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [DeepSDF: Learning Continuous Signed Distance Functions for Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05103/) (2019)
- [Scalability in Perception for Autonomous Driving: Waymo Open Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04838/) (2019)
- [CARLA: An Open Urban Driving Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.03938/) (2017)
- [Occupancy Networks: Learning 3D Reconstruction in Function Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03828/) (2018)
- [Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12077/) (2021)
- [Mip-NeRF: A Multiscale Representation for Anti-Aliasing Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13415/) (2021)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [Plenoxels: Radiance Fields without Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05131/) (2021)
- [D-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13961/) (2020)
- [Volume Rendering of Neural Implicit Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12052/) (2021)
- [Neural Sparse Voxel Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11571/) (2020)
- [NeRF++: Analyzing and Improving Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.07492/) (2020)
- [Depth-supervised NeRF: Fewer Views and Faster Training for Free](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02791/) (2021)
- [Zip-NeRF: Anti-Aliased Grid-Based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06706/) (2023)
- [UNISURF: Unifying Neural Implicit Surfaces and Radiance Fields for Multi-View Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10078/) (2021)
- [BARF: Bundle-Adjusting Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06405/) (2021)
- [Neural Fields in Visual Computing and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11426/) (2021)
- [Searching Efficient 3D Architectures with Sparse Point-Voxel Convolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.16100/) (2020)
- [NeRF in the Dark: High Dynamic Range View Synthesis from Noisy Raw Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.13679/) (2021)
- [Dense Depth Priors for Neural Radiance Fields from Sparse Input Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03288/) (2021)
- [Neural Scene Graphs for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.10379/) (2020)
- [PREDATOR: Registration of 3D Point Clouds with Low Overlap](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13005/) (2020)
- [Urban Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14643/) (2021)
- [LiDARsim: Realistic LiDAR Simulation by Leveraging the Real World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09348/) (2020)
- [Fog Simulation on Real LiDAR Point Clouds for 3D Object Detection in Adverse Weather](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.05249/) (2021)
- [EventNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from a Single Colour Event Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.11896/) (2022)
- [T"oRF: Time-of-Flight Radiance Fields for Dynamic Scene View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.15271/) (2021)
- [LiDAR Snowfall Simulation for Robust 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15118/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 67)

- [Repurposing Diffusion-Based Image Generators for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02145/) (2023)
- [Street Gaussians: Modeling Dynamic Urban Scenes with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01339/) (2024)
- [NeuRAD: Neural Rendering for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15260/) (2023)
- [Cosmos-Drive-Dreams: Scalable Synthetic Driving Data Generation with World Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09042/) (2025)
- [Marigold: Affordable Adaptation of Diffusion-Based Image Generators for Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09358/) (2025)
- [SplatAD: Real-Time Lidar and Camera Rendering with 3D Gaussian Splatting for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.16816/) (2024)
- [A Survey of World Models for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.11260/) (2025)
- [LidarDM: Generative LiDAR Simulation in a Generated World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02903/) (2024)
- [PIN-SLAM: LiDAR SLAM Using a Point-Based Implicit Neural Representation for Achieving Global Map Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09101/) (2024)
- [HDR-GS: Efficient High Dynamic Range Novel View Synthesis at 1000x Speed via Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.15125/) (2024)
- [G3R: Gradient Guided Generalizable Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.19405/) (2024)
- [LiDAR4D: Dynamic Neural Fields for Novel Space-time View LiDAR Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02742/) (2024)
- [Dynamic LiDAR Re-simulation using Compositional Neural Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.05247/) (2023)
- [Neural Fields in Robotics: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.20220/) (2024)
- [DART: Implicit Doppler Tomography for Radar Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03896/) (2024)
- [Neural Radiance Field in Autonomous Driving: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13816/) (2024)
- [GeoDrive: 3D Geometry-Informed Driving World Model with Precise Action Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22421/) (2025)
- [Radar Fields: Frequency-Space Neural Scene Representations for FMCW Radar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04662/) (2024)
- [AlignMiF: Geometry-Aligned Multimodal Implicit Field for LiDAR-Camera Joint Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17483/) (2024)
- [Towards 3D Vision with Low-Cost Single-Photon Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17801/) (2024)
- [LiDAR-GS:Real-time LiDAR Re-Simulation using Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05111/) (2024)
- [RadarSplat: Radar Gaussian Splatting for High-Fidelity Data Synthesis and 3D Reconstruction of Autonomous Driving Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01379/) (2025)
- [PBR-NeRF: Inverse Rendering with Physics-Based Neural Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.09680/) (2024)
- [HGS-Mapping: Online Dense Mapping Using Hybrid Gaussian Representation in Urban Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.20159/) (2024)
- [LiDAR-RT: Gaussian-based Ray Tracing for Dynamic LiDAR Re-simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15199/) (2024)
- [PlatoNeRF: 3D Reconstruction in Plato's Cave via Single-View Two-Bounce Lidar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14239/) (2023)
- [Bayesian NeRF: Quantifying Uncertainty with Volume Density for Neural Implicit Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06727/) (2024)
- [Generative Artificial Intelligence Meets Synthetic Aperture Radar: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.05027/) (2024)
- [3D LiDAR Mapping in Dynamic Environments Using a 4D Implicit Neural Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.03388/) (2024)
- [UniCal: Unified Neural Sensor Calibration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18953/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present Neural Fields for LiDAR (NFL), a method to optimise a neural field scene representation from LiDAR measurements, with the goal of synthesizing realistic LiDAR scans from novel viewpoints. NFL combines the rendering power of neural fields with a detailed, physically motivated model of the LiDAR sensing process, thus enabling it to accurately reproduce key sensor behaviors like beam divergence, secondary returns, and ray dropping. We evaluate NFL on synthetic and real LiDAR scans and show that it outperforms explicit reconstruct-then-simulate methods as well as other NeRF-style methods on LiDAR novel view synthesis task. Moreover, we show that the improved realism of the synthesized views narrows the domain gap to real scans and translates to better registration and semantic segmentation performance.