# The Oxford Spires Dataset: Benchmarking Large-Scale LiDAR-Visual Localisation, Reconstruction and Radiance Field Methods

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.10546 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.10546/

## Key facts

- Cited by 28 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 38 of its 71 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Nov 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 38)

- [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)
- [ScanNet: Richly-annotated 3D Reconstructions of Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.04405/) (2017)
- [Matterport3D: Learning from RGB-D Data in Indoor Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.06158/) (2017)
- [NeRF in the Wild: Neural Radiance Fields for Unconstrained Photo Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02268/) (2020)
- [The Replica Dataset: A Digital Replica of Indoor Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05797/) (2019)
- [ScanNet++: A High-Fidelity Dataset of 3D Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11417/) (2023)
- [DROID-SLAM: Deep Visual SLAM for Monocular, Stereo, and RGB-D Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10869/) (2021)
- [Local Light Field Fusion: Practical View Synthesis with Prescriptive Sampling Guidelines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.00889/) (2019)
- [Nerfstudio: A Modular Framework for Neural Radiance Field Development](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04264/) (2023)
- [NICE-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scalable Encoding for SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12130/) (2021)
- [iMAP: Implicit Mapping and Positioning in Real-Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.12352/) (2021)
- [gsplat: An Open-Source Library for Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.06765/) (2024)
- [LIO-SAM: Tightly-coupled Lidar Inertial Odometry via Smoothing and Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.00258/) (2020)
- [FAST-LIO2: Fast Direct LiDAR-inertial Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.06829/) (2021)
- [WoodScape: A multi-task, multi-camera fisheye dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.01489/) (2019)
- [RELLIS-3D Dataset: Data, Benchmarks and Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12954/) (2020)
- [Gaussian in the Wild: 3D Gaussian Splatting for Unconstrained Image Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15704/) (2024)
- [LaMAR: Benchmarking Localization and Mapping for Augmented Reality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.10770/) (2022)
- [The TUM VI Benchmark for Evaluating Visual-Inertial Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.06120/) (2018)
- [The Newer College Dataset: Handheld LiDAR, Inertial and Vision with Ground Truth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.05691/) (2020)
- [FAST-LIVO2: Fast, Direct LiDAR-Inertial-Visual Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.14035/) (2024)
- [PIN-SLAM: LiDAR SLAM Using a Point-Based Implicit Neural Representation for Achieving Global Map Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09101/) (2024)
- [Fast Fourier Color Constancy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07596/) (2016)
- [VILENS: Visual, Inertial, Lidar, and Leg Odometry for All-Terrain Legged Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07243/) (2021)
- [BotanicGarden: A High-Quality Dataset for Robot Navigation in Unstructured Natural Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14137/) (2023)
- [The Hilti SLAM Challenge Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.11316/) (2021)
- [Nothing Stands Still: A Spatiotemporal Benchmark on 3D Point Cloud Registration Under Large Geometric and Temporal Change](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09346/) (2023)
- [MCD: Diverse Large-Scale Multi-Campus Dataset for Robot Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11496/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [LingBot-Map: Geometric Context Transformer for Streaming 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.14141/) (2026)
- [Scal3R: Scalable Test-Time Training for Large-Scale 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08542/) (2026)
- [PINGS: Gaussian Splatting Meets Distance Fields within a Point-Based Implicit Neural Map](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05752/) (2025)
- [GS-LIVO: Real-Time LiDAR, Inertial, and Visual Multi-sensor Fused Odometry with Gaussian Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.08672/) (2025)
- [Register Any Point: Scaling 3D Point Cloud Registration by Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.01850/) (2025)
- [HorizonStream: Long-Horizon Attention for Streaming 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.23889/) (2026)
- [GS-SDF: LiDAR-Augmented Gaussian Splatting and Neural SDF for Geometrically Consistent Rendering and Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10170/) (2025)
- [Seeing in the Dark: Benchmarking Egocentric 3D Vision with the Oxford Day-and-Night Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04224/) (2025)
- [SiLVR: Scalable Lidar-Visual Radiance Field Reconstruction with Uncertainty Quantification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.02657/) (2025)
- [StreamTTO: Efficient Online Test-Time Optimization for Video Depth Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.01765/) (2026)
- [SLAM&Render: A Benchmark for the Intersection Between Neural Rendering, Gaussian Splatting and SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13713/) (2025)
- [MCGS-SLAM: A Multi-Camera SLAM Framework Using Gaussian Splatting for High-Fidelity Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.14191/) (2025)
- [UniScale: Unified Scale-Aware 3D Reconstruction for Multi-View Understanding via Prior Injection for Robotic Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.23224/) (2026)
- [SAF3R: Dynamic Sparse Attention for Feed-Forward 3D Reconstruction Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.03612/) (2026)
- [Revisiting Local Context for Long-Horizon Streaming 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.27529/) (2026)
- [GeoTexBuild: 3D Building Model Generation from Map Footprints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.08419/) (2025)
- [Neural-MMGS: Multi-modal Neural Gaussian Splats for Large-Scale Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17762/) (2025)
- [LAPS: Improving Incremental LiDAR Mapping using Active Pooling and Sampling for Neural Distance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15496/) (2026)
- [Triangle Splatting SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.31419/) (2026)
- [Geometry-Aware Fisheye-LiDAR Fusion for Robust 3D Object Detection in Low-Overlap Setups](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.08844/) (2026)
- [Real-Time LiDAR Gaussian Splatting SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.04127/) (2026)
- [WildCity: A Real-World City-Scale Testbed for Rendering, Simulation, and Spatial Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.06838/) (2026)
- [GeoWeaver: Accurate Long-Sequence 3D Reconstruction via Hierarchical Geometric Assembly](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.17389/) (2026)
- [DRS-VPT: Directly Relocalizing in a Scan with Vision Point Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.12557/) (2026)
- [SURE-Map: Self-Correcting Streaming Geometric Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.15795/) (2026)
- [AMB3R-SLAM: Kilometer-scale SLAM with Hierarchical Backend](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.19518/) (2026)
- [CLoSeR: Closing the Loop for Long-Context Streaming Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.01927/) (2026)
- [MIRAGE: Metric Inference and Reliability-Aware Gaussian Estimation from Feed-Forward Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.12568/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper introduces a large-scale multi-modal dataset captured in and around well-known landmarks in Oxford using a custom-built multi-sensor perception unit as well as a millimetre-accurate map from a Terrestrial LiDAR Scanner (TLS). The perception unit includes three synchronised global shutter colour cameras, an automotive 3D LiDAR scanner, and an inertial sensor - all precisely calibrated. We also establish benchmarks for tasks involving localisation, reconstruction, and novel-view synthesis, which enable the evaluation of Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) methods, Structure-from-Motion (SfM) and Multi-view Stereo (MVS) methods as well as radiance field methods such as Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) and 3D Gaussian Splatting. To evaluate 3D reconstruction the TLS 3D models are used as ground truth. Localisation ground truth is computed by registering the mobile LiDAR scans to the TLS 3D models. Radiance field methods are evaluated not only with poses sampled from the input trajectory, but also from viewpoints that are from trajectories which are distant from the training poses. Our evaluation demonstrates a key limitation of state-of-the-art radiance field methods: we show that they tend to overfit to the training poses/images and do not generalise well to out-of-sequence poses. They also underperform in 3D reconstruction compared to MVS systems using the same visual inputs. Our dataset and benchmarks are intended to facilitate better integration of radiance field methods and SLAM systems. The raw and processed data, along with software for parsing and evaluation, can be accessed at https://dynamic.robots.ox.ac.uk/datasets/oxford-spires/.