# Feature Splatting for Better Novel View Synthesis with Low Overlap

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.15518 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.15518/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 33 of its 42 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 May 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 33)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12077/) (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)
- [Neural Sparse Voxel Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11571/) (2020)
- [ScanNet++: A High-Fidelity Dataset of 3D Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11417/) (2023)
- [Depth-supervised NeRF: Fewer Views and Faster Training for Free](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02791/) (2021)
- [NICE-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scalable Encoding for SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12130/) (2021)
- [LERF: Language Embedded Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09553/) (2023)
- [Point-NeRF: Point-based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08845/) (2022)
- [iMAP: Implicit Mapping and Positioning in Real-Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.12352/) (2021)
- [LangSplat: 3D Language Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16084/) (2023)
- [Gaussian Grouping: Segment and Edit Anything in 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00732/) (2023)
- [Compact 3D Gaussian Representation for Radiance Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.13681/) (2023)
- [Feature 3DGS: Supercharging 3D Gaussian Splatting to Enable Distilled Feature Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03203/) (2023)
- [NeuS2: Fast Learning of Neural Implicit Surfaces for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.05231/) (2022)
- [Dense Depth Priors for Neural Radiance Fields from Sparse Input Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03288/) (2021)
- [Panoptic Neural Fields: A Semantic Object-Aware Neural Scene Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.04334/) (2022)
- [Differentiable Surface Splatting for Point-based Geometry Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.04173/) (2019)
- [DONeRF: Towards Real-Time Rendering of Compact Neural Radiance Fields using Depth Oracle Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03231/) (2021)
- [Point-Based Neural Rendering with Per-View Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.02369/) (2021)
- [Point-SLAM: Dense Neural Point Cloud-based SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04278/) (2023)
- [Editable Free-viewpoint Video Using a Layered Neural Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14786/) (2021)
- [MINE: Towards Continuous Depth MPI with NeRF for Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14910/) (2021)
- [Distilled Feature Fields Enable Few-Shot Language-Guided Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07931/) (2023)
- [FMGS: Foundation Model Embedded 3D Gaussian Splatting for Holistic 3D Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01970/) (2024)
- [Neural Point Catacaustics for Novel-View Synthesis of Reflections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.01087/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Sparse Voxels Rasterization: Real-time High-fidelity Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04459/) (2024)
- [Viser: Imperative, Web-based 3D Visualization in Python](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.22885/) (2025)
- [Multi-Spectral Gaussian Splatting with Neural Color Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.03407/) (2025)
- [EVA-Gaussian: 3D Gaussian-based Real-time Human Novel View Synthesis under Diverse Multi-view Camera Settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.01425/) (2024)
- [Neural Harmonic Textures for High-Quality Primitive Based Neural Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.01204/) (2026)
- [HFGaussian: Learning Generalizable Gaussian Human with Integrated Human Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.03086/) (2024)
- [IM360: Large-scale Indoor Mapping with 360 Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12545/) (2025)
- [SLAM&Render: A Benchmark for the Intersection Between Neural Rendering, Gaussian Splatting and SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13713/) (2025)
- [PAGaS: Pixel-Aligned 1DoF Gaussian Splatting for Depth Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.22129/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

3D Gaussian Splatting has emerged as a very promising scene representation, achieving state-of-the-art quality in novel view synthesis significantly faster than competing alternatives. However, its use of spherical harmonics to represent scene colors limits the expressivity of 3D Gaussians and, as a consequence, the capability of the representation to generalize as we move away from the training views. In this paper, we propose to encode the color information of 3D Gaussians into per-Gaussian feature vectors, which we denote as Feature Splatting (FeatSplat). To synthesize a novel view, Gaussians are first "splatted" into the image plane, then the corresponding feature vectors are alpha-blended, and finally the blended vector is decoded by a small MLP to render the RGB pixel values. To further inform the model, we concatenate a camera embedding to the blended feature vector, to condition the decoding also on the viewpoint information. Our experiments show that these novel model for encoding the radiance considerably improves novel view synthesis for low overlap views that are distant from the training views. Finally, we also show the capacity and convenience of our feature vector representation, demonstrating its capability not only to generate RGB values for novel views, but also their per-pixel semantic labels. Code available at https://github.com/tberriel/FeatSplat . Keywords: Gaussian Splatting, Novel View Synthesis, Feature Splatting