# 3D Gaussian Splatting for Large-scale Surface Reconstruction from Aerial Images

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.00381 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00381/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 31 Aug 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [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)
- [2D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17888/) (2024)
- [MVSNet: Depth Inference for Unstructured Multi-view Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02505/) (2018)
- [Block-NeRF: Scalable Large Scene Neural View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05263/) (2022)
- [Scaffold-GS: Structured 3D Gaussians for View-Adaptive Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00109/) (2023)
- [Mip-Splatting: Alias-free 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16493/) (2023)
- [SuGaR: Surface-Aligned Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Mesh Reconstruction and High-Quality Mesh Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12775/) (2023)
- [Neuralangelo: High-Fidelity Neural Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03092/) (2023)
- [Mega-NeRF: Scalable Construction of Large-Scale NeRFs for Virtual Fly-Throughs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10703/) (2021)
- [VastGaussian: Vast 3D Gaussians for Large Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17427/) (2024)
- [CityGaussian: Real-time High-quality Large-Scale Scene Rendering with Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01133/) (2024)
- [Deblur-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from Blurry Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14292/) (2021)
- [Tri-MipRF: Tri-Mip Representation for Efficient Anti-Aliasing Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.11335/) (2023)
- [Capturing, Reconstructing, and Simulating: the UrbanScene3D Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.04286/) (2021)
- [Multi-Scale Geometric Consistency Guided Multi-View Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08103/) (2019)
- [Grid-guided Neural Radiance Fields for Large Urban Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14001/) (2023)
- [Approximate Differentiable Rendering with Algebraic Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.10606/) (2022)
- [A Novel Recurrent Encoder-Decoder Structure for Large-Scale Multi-view Stereo Reconstruction from An Open Aerial Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.00637/) (2020)
- [UE4-NeRF:Neural Radiance Field for Real-Time Rendering of Large-Scale Scene](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.13263/) (2023)
- [GP-NeRF: Generalized Perception NeRF for Context-Aware 3D Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11863/) (2023)
- [PatchMVSNet: Patch-wise Unsupervised Multi-View Stereo for Weakly-Textured Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02156/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Skyfall-GS: Synthesizing Immersive 3D Urban Scenes from Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.15869/) (2025)
- [Refining Gaussian Splatting: A Volumetric Densification Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05187/) (2025)
- [Sky2Ground: A Benchmark for Site Modeling under Varying Altitude](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13740/) (2026)
- [SwiftGS: Episodic Priors for Immediate Satellite Surface Recovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.18634/) (2026)
- [AdaAnchor4D: Anchor-Conditioned Spatiotemporal Feature Aggregation for Monocular UAV 4D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.28320/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recently, 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) has demonstrated excellent ability in small-scale 3D surface reconstruction. However, extending 3DGS to large-scale scenes remains a significant challenge. To address this gap, we propose a novel 3DGS-based method for large-scale surface reconstruction using aerial multi-view stereo (MVS) images, named Aerial Gaussian Splatting (AGS). First, we introduce a data chunking method tailored for large-scale aerial images, making 3DGS feasible for surface reconstruction over extensive scenes. Second, we integrate the Ray-Gaussian Intersection method into 3DGS to obtain depth and normal information. Finally, we implement multi-view geometric consistency constraints to enhance the geometric consistency across different views. Our experiments on multiple datasets demonstrate, for the first time, the 3DGS-based method can match conventional aerial MVS methods on geometric accuracy in aerial large-scale surface reconstruction, and our method also beats state-of-the-art GS-based methods both on geometry and rendering quality.