# GLACE: Global Local Accelerated Coordinate Encoding

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.04340 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04340/

## Key facts

- Cited by 48 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 37 of its 62 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Jun 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 37)

- [Fourier Features Let Networks Learn High Frequency Functions in Low Dimensional Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10739/) (2020)
- [SuperGlue: Learning Feature Matching with Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11763/) (2019)
- [On the Spectral Bias of Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.08734/) (2018)
- [SuperPoint: Self-Supervised Interest Point Detection and Description](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07629/) (2017)
- [NetVLAD: CNN architecture for weakly supervised place recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.07247/) (2015)
- [From Coarse to Fine: Robust Hierarchical Localization at Large Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03506/) (2018)
- [DSAC - Differentiable RANSAC for Camera Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.05705/) (2016)
- [Geometric Loss Functions for Camera Pose Regression with Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.00390/) (2017)
- [Back to the Feature: Learning Robust Camera Localization from Pixels to Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.09213/) (2021)
- [Understanding the Limitations of CNN-based Absolute Camera Pose Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07504/) (2019)
- [Visual Camera Re-Localization from RGB and RGB-D Images Using DSAC](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.12324/) (2020)
- [Geometry-Aware Learning of Maps for Camera Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.03342/) (2017)
- [MAGSAC++, a fast, reliable and accurate robust estimator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.05909/) (2019)
- [Learning Less is More - 6D Camera Localization via 3D Surface Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10228/) (2017)
- [Image-based localization using LSTMs for structured feature correlation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07890/) (2016)
- [MAGSAC: marginalizing sample consensus](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.07469/) (2018)
- [Learning Multi-Scene Absolute Pose Regression with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11468/) (2021)
- [Accelerated Coordinate Encoding: Learning to Relocalize in Minutes using RGB and Poses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14059/) (2023)
- [R2Former: Unified Retrieval and Reranking Transformer for Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03410/) (2023)
- [Hierarchical Scene Coordinate Classification and Regression for Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.06216/) (2019)
- [Expert Sample Consensus Applied to Camera Re-Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.02484/) (2019)
- [Robust Image Retrieval-based Visual Localization using Kapture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.13867/) (2020)
- [On the Limits of Pseudo Ground Truth in Visual Camera Re-localisation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.00524/) (2021)
- [Learning to Navigate the Energy Landscape](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.05772/) (2016)
- [MeshLoc: Mesh-Based Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.10762/) (2022)
- [To Learn or Not to Learn: Visual Localization from Essential Matrices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.01293/) (2019)
- [Semantic Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.05773/) (2017)
- [Is Geometry Enough for Matching in Visual Localization?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12979/) (2022)
- [Hybrid Scene Compression for Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.07512/) (2018)
- [On-the-Fly Adaptation of Regression Forests for Online Camera Relocalisation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.02779/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 48)

- [GS-CPR: Efficient Camera Pose Refinement via 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.11085/) (2024)
- [UAVScenes: A Multi-Modal Dataset for UAVs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.22412/) (2025)
- [R-SCoRe: Revisiting Scene Coordinate Regression for Robust Large-Scale Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.01421/) (2025)
- [GSplatLoc: Grounding Keypoint Descriptors into 3D Gaussian Splatting for Improved Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.16502/) (2024)
- [From Sparse to Dense: Camera Relocalization with Scene-Specific Detector from Feature Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.19358/) (2025)
- [LightLoc: Learning Outdoor LiDAR Localization at Light Speed](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17814/) (2025)
- [Differentiable Product Quantization for Memory Efficient Camera Relocalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15540/) (2024)
- [ACE-G: Improving Generalization of Scene Coordinate Regression Through Query Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.11605/) (2025)
- [HGSLoc: 3DGS-based Heuristic Camera Pose Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.10925/) (2024)
- [Seeing in the Dark: Benchmarking Egocentric 3D Vision with the Oxford Day-and-Night Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04224/) (2025)
- [LoGS: Visual Localization via Gaussian Splatting with Fewer Training Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.11505/) (2024)
- [GSVisLoc: Generalizable Visual Localization for Gaussian Splatting Scene Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.18242/) (2025)
- [A Scene is Worth a Thousand Features: Feed-Forward Camera Localization from a Collection of Image Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.00978/) (2025)
- [Adversarial Exploitation of Data Diversity Improves Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00138/) (2024)
- [A2-GNN: Angle-Annular GNN for Visual Descriptor-free Camera Relocalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20036/) (2025)
- [AirZoo: A Unified Large-Scale Dataset for Grounding Aerial Geometric 3D Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.26567/) (2026)
- [Scene Coordinate Reconstruction Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.12387/) (2025)
- [Enhancing Scene Coordinate Regression with Efficient Keypoint Detection and Sequential Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06488/) (2024)
- [Camera Pose Refinement via 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17876/) (2025)
- [GRLoc: Geometric Representation Regression for Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.13864/) (2025)
- [ImLoc: Revisiting Visual Localization with Image-based Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.04185/) (2026)
- [SCE-SLAM: Scale-Consistent Monocular SLAM via Scene Coordinate Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.09665/) (2026)
- [Rethinking Pose Refinement in 3D Gaussian Splatting under Pose Prior and Geometric Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.16538/) (2026)
- [egenioussBench: A New Dataset for Geospatial Visual Localisation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.05351/) (2026)
- [Reference-Induced Consensus for Selective Posed-Reference Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.04722/) (2026)
- [FUSELOC: Fusing Global and Local Descriptors to Disambiguate 2D-3D Matching in Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.12037/) (2024)
- [GateAttentionPose: Enhancing Pose Estimation with Agent Attention and Improved Gated Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.07798/) (2024)
- [SGLoc: Semantic Localization System for Camera Pose Estimation from 3D Gaussian Splatting Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12027/) (2025)
- [Relative Pose Regression with Pose Auto-Encoders: Enhancing Accuracy and Data Efficiency for Retail Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10933/) (2025)
- [MACE: Mixture-of-Experts Accelerated Coordinate Encoding for Large-Scale Scene Localization and Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.14251/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Scene coordinate regression (SCR) methods are a family of visual localization methods that directly regress 2D-3D matches for camera pose estimation. They are effective in small-scale scenes but face significant challenges in large-scale scenes that are further amplified in the absence of ground truth 3D point clouds for supervision. Here, the model can only rely on reprojection constraints and needs to implicitly triangulate the points. The challenges stem from a fundamental dilemma: The network has to be invariant to observations of the same landmark at different viewpoints and lighting conditions, etc., but at the same time discriminate unrelated but similar observations. The latter becomes more relevant and severe in larger scenes. In this work, we tackle this problem by introducing the concept of co-visibility to the network. We propose GLACE, which integrates pre-trained global and local encodings and enables SCR to scale to large scenes with only a single small-sized network. Specifically, we propose a novel feature diffusion technique that implicitly groups the reprojection constraints with co-visibility and avoids overfitting to trivial solutions. Additionally, our position decoder parameterizes the output positions for large-scale scenes more effectively. Without using 3D models or depth maps for supervision, our method achieves state-of-the-art results on large-scale scenes with a low-map-size model. On Cambridge landmarks, with a single model, we achieve 17% lower median position error than Poker, the ensemble variant of the state-of-the-art SCR method ACE. Code is available at: https://github.com/cvg/glace.