# VDG: Vision-Only Dynamic Gaussian for Driving Simulation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.18198 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18198/

## Key facts

- Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in World models for autonomous driving, one of 11 directions in World models.
- Builds on 37 of its 46 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Jun 2024.

## Placed in

- World models / [World models for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/wm/world-models-for-autonomous-driving/)

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

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [Scalability in Perception for Autonomous Driving: Waymo Open Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04838/) (2019)
- [D-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13961/) (2020)
- [NeRF in the Wild: Neural Radiance Fields for Unconstrained Photo Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02268/) (2020)
- [Depth-supervised NeRF: Fewer Views and Faster Training for Free](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02791/) (2021)
- [Mip-Splatting: Alias-free 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16493/) (2023)
- [BARF: Bundle-Adjusting Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06405/) (2021)
- [SplaTAM: Splat, Track & Map 3D Gaussians for Dense RGB-D SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02126/) (2023)
- [INeRF: Inverting Neural Radiance Fields for Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05877/) (2020)
- [DrivingGaussian: Composite Gaussian Splatting for Surrounding Dynamic Autonomous Driving Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07920/) (2023)
- [ReconFusion: 3D Reconstruction with Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02981/) (2023)
- [GS-SLAM: Dense Visual SLAM with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11700/) (2023)
- [Panoptic Neural Fields: A Semantic Object-Aware Neural Scene Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.04334/) (2022)
- [NoPe-NeRF: Optimising Neural Radiance Field with No Pose Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.07388/) (2022)
- [EmerNeRF: Emergent Spatial-Temporal Scene Decomposition via Self-Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.02077/) (2023)
- [Robust Dynamic Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.02239/) (2023)
- [COLMAP-Free 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07504/) (2023)
- [MARS: An Instance-aware, Modular and Realistic Simulator for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15058/) (2023)
- [SUDS: Scalable Urban Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14536/) (2023)
- [Periodic Vibration Gaussian: Dynamic Urban Scene Reconstruction and Real-time Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18561/) (2023)
- [D2NeRF: Self-Supervised Decoupling of Dynamic and Static Objects from a Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15838/) (2022)
- [StreetSurf: Extending Multi-view Implicit Surface Reconstruction to Street Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04988/) (2023)
- [Progressively Optimized Local Radiance Fields for Robust View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13791/) (2023)
- [GARF: Gaussian Activated Radiance Fields for High Fidelity Reconstruction and Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.05735/) (2022)
- [VISTA 2.0: An Open, Data-driven Simulator for Multimodal Sensing and Policy Learning for Autonomous Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12083/) (2021)
- [CG-SLAM: Efficient Dense RGB-D SLAM in a Consistent Uncertainty-aware 3D Gaussian Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.16095/) (2024)
- [DBARF: Deep Bundle-Adjusting Generalizable Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14478/) (2023)
- [Renderable Neural Radiance Map for Visual Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.00304/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [3D and 4D World Modeling: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.07996/) (2025)
- [CityGS-X: A Scalable Architecture for Efficient and Geometrically Accurate Large-Scale Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23044/) (2025)
- [A Survey on 3D Gaussian Splatting Applications: Segmentation, Editing, and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09977/) (2025)
- [GaussianFormer3D: Multi-Modal Gaussian-based Semantic Occupancy Prediction with 3D Deformable Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10685/) (2025)
- [EMD: Explicit Motion Modeling for High-Quality Street Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15582/) (2024)
- [Dynamic Scene Reconstruction: Recent Advance in Real-time Rendering and Streaming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08166/) (2025)
- [Learning-based 3D Reconstruction in Autonomous Driving: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14537/) (2025)
- [VGD: Visual Geometry Gaussian Splatting for Feed-Forward Surround-view Driving Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19578/) (2025)
- [Seeing World Dynamics in a Nutshell](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.03465/) (2025)
- [ParkGaussian: Surround-view 3D Gaussian Splatting for Autonomous Parking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.01386/) (2026)
- [sshELF: Single-Shot Hierarchical Extrapolation of Latent Features for 3D Reconstruction from Sparse-Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.04318/) (2025)
- [OCSplats: Observation Completeness Quantification and Label Noise Separation in 3DGS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.01239/) (2025)
- [ComplicitSplat: Downstream Models are Vulnerable to Blackbox Attacks by 3D Gaussian Splat Camouflages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.11854/) (2025)
- [DriveSplat: Unified Neural Gaussian Reconstruction for Dynamic Driving Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15376/) (2025)
- [StereoMV2D: A Sparse Temporal Stereo-Enhanced Framework for Robust Multi-View 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.17620/) (2025)
- [SparseStreet: Sparse Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Street Scene Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.03909/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Dynamic Gaussian splatting has led to impressive scene reconstruction and image synthesis advances in novel views. Existing methods, however, heavily rely on pre-computed poses and Gaussian initialization by Structure from Motion (SfM) algorithms or expensive sensors. For the first time, this paper addresses this issue by integrating self-supervised VO into our pose-free dynamic Gaussian method (VDG) to boost pose and depth initialization and static-dynamic decomposition. Moreover, VDG can work with only RGB image input and construct dynamic scenes at a faster speed and larger scenes compared with the pose-free dynamic view-synthesis method. We demonstrate the robustness of our approach via extensive quantitative and qualitative experiments. Our results show favorable performance over the state-of-the-art dynamic view synthesis methods. Additional video and source code will be posted on our project page at https://3d-aigc.github.io/VDG.