# Horizon-GS: Unified 3D Gaussian Splatting for Large-Scale Aerial-to-Ground Scenes

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.01745 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.01745/

## Key facts

- Cited by 30 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 41 of its 53 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Dec 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [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)
- [Plenoxels: Radiance Fields without Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05131/) (2021)
- [Depth Anything V2](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09414/) (2024)
- [TensoRF: Tensorial Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09517/) (2022)
- [2D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17888/) (2024)
- [Direct Voxel Grid Optimization: Super-fast Convergence for Radiance Fields Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11215/) (2021)
- [Neural Sparse Voxel Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11571/) (2020)
- [Grounded SAM: Assembling Open-World Models for Diverse Visual Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14159/) (2024)
- [DreamGaussian: Generative Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16653/) (2023)
- [LGM: Large Multi-View Gaussian Model for High-Resolution 3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05054/) (2024)
- [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)
- [SuGaR: Surface-Aligned Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Mesh Reconstruction and High-Quality Mesh Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12775/) (2023)
- [KITTI-360: A Novel Dataset and Benchmarks for Urban Scene Understanding in 2D and 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.13410/) (2021)
- [Mega-NeRF: Scalable Construction of Large-Scale NeRFs for Virtual Fly-Throughs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10703/) (2021)
- [DrivingGaussian: Composite Gaussian Splatting for Surrounding Dynamic Autonomous Driving Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07920/) (2023)
- [GS-LRM: Large Reconstruction Model for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.19702/) (2024)
- [GRM: Large Gaussian Reconstruction Model for Efficient 3D Reconstruction and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14621/) (2024)
- [Urban Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14643/) (2021)
- [Gaussian Opacity Fields: Efficient Adaptive Surface Reconstruction in Unbounded Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.10772/) (2024)
- [Octree-GS: Towards Consistent Real-time Rendering with LOD-Structured 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17898/) (2024)
- [BungeeNeRF: Progressive Neural Radiance Field for Extreme Multi-scale Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05504/) (2021)
- [A Hierarchical 3D Gaussian Representation for Real-Time Rendering of Very Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12080/) (2024)
- [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)
- [MatrixCity: A Large-scale City Dataset for City-scale Neural Rendering and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16553/) (2023)
- [Optimizing the Latent Space of Generative Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.05776/) (2017)
- [Periodic Vibration Gaussian: Dynamic Urban Scene Reconstruction and Real-time Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18561/) (2023)

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

- [AnySplat: Feed-forward 3D Gaussian Splatting from Unconstrained Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23716/) (2025)
- [ObjectGS: Object-aware Scene Reconstruction and Scene Understanding via Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.15454/) (2025)
- [Skyfall-GS: Synthesizing Immersive 3D Urban Scenes from Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.15869/) (2025)
- [GS-Occ3D: Scaling Vision-only Occupancy Reconstruction with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19451/) (2025)
- [ARTDECO: Towards Efficient and High-Fidelity On-the-Fly 3D Reconstruction with Structured Scene Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.08551/) (2025)
- [HaloGS: Loose Coupling of Compact Geometry and Gaussian Splats for 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20267/) (2025)
- [CrossView-GS: Cross-view Gaussian Splatting For Large-scale Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.01695/) (2025)
- [OracleGS: Grounding Generative Priors for Sparse-View Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.23258/) (2025)
- [Proxy-GS: Unified Occlusion Priors for Training and Inference in Structured 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.24421/) (2025)
- [SAT-SKYLINES: 3D Building Generation from Satellite Imagery and Coarse Geometric Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.18531/) (2025)
- [PLANING: A Loosely Coupled Triangle-Gaussian Framework for Streaming 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.22046/) (2026)
- [A LoD of Gaussians: Unified Training and Rendering for Ultra-Large Scale Reconstruction with External Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.01110/) (2025)
- [LoBE-GS: Load-Balanced and Efficient 3D Gaussian Splatting for Large-Scale Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.01767/) (2025)
- [EGGS: Exchangeable 2D/3D Gaussian Splatting for Geometry-Appearance Balanced Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.02932/) (2025)
- [M^3: Dense Matching Meets Multi-View Foundation Models for Monocular Gaussian Splatting SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.16844/) (2026)
- [Visually-grounded Humanoid Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08509/) (2026)
- [Leveraging NeRF-Rendered Images for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.09034/) (2026)
- [Sky2Ground: A Benchmark for Site Modeling under Varying Altitude](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13740/) (2026)
- [Splaxel: Efficient Distributed Training of 3D Gaussian Splatting for Large-scale Scene Reconstruction via Pixel-level Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.18588/) (2026)
- [TraGraph-GS: Trajectory Graph-based Gaussian Splatting for Arbitrary Large-Scale Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.08704/) (2025)
- [Beyond a Single Light: A Large-Scale Aerial Dataset for Urban Scene Reconstruction Under Varying Illumination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.14200/) (2025)
- [A 3D Reconstruction Benchmark for Asset Inspection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.17358/) (2026)
- [ProDiG: Progressive Diffusion-Guided Gaussian Splatting for Aerial to Ground Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.02003/) (2026)
- [Two-View Accumulation as the Primary Training Lever for Hybrid-Capture Gaussian Splatting: A Variance-Decomposition View of When Gradient Surgery Helps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.00052/) (2026)
- [Cross-View Splatter: Feed-Forward View Synthesis with Georeferenced Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19656/) (2026)
- [City-Mesh3R: Simulation-Ready City-Scale 3D Mesh Reconstruction from Multi-View Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.30310/) (2026)
- [Geometry and Gradient-based Partitioning for Panoramic Outdoor Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.08769/) (2026)
- [GridFlow: Structured Latent Flow for Seamless City-Scale 3D Point Cloud Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29793/) (2026)
- [LangStreet: Persistent Language Fields for Anchor-Decoded Street Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.11616/) (2026)
- [SkyAnchor: Updating Metric-scale Aerial 3D Gaussian Scenes from Unposed Ground-View Sequences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.13903/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Seamless integration of both aerial and street view images remains a significant challenge in neural scene reconstruction and rendering. Existing methods predominantly focus on single domain, limiting their applications in immersive environments, which demand extensive free view exploration with large view changes both horizontally and vertically. We introduce Horizon-GS, a novel approach built upon Gaussian Splatting techniques, tackles the unified reconstruction and rendering for aerial and street views. Our method addresses the key challenges of combining these perspectives with a new training strategy, overcoming viewpoint discrepancies to generate high-fidelity scenes. We also curate a high-quality aerial-to-ground views dataset encompassing both synthetic and real-world scene to advance further research. Experiments across diverse urban scene datasets confirm the effectiveness of our method.