# R-SCoRe: Revisiting Scene Coordinate Regression for Robust Large-Scale Visual Localization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.01421 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.01421/

## Key facts

- Cited by 17 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 55 of its 86 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Jan 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 55)

- [Efficient Estimation of Word Representations in Vector Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1301.3781/) (2013)
- [ScanNet: Richly-annotated 3D Reconstructions of Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.04405/) (2017)
- [Fourier Features Let Networks Learn High Frequency Functions in Low Dimensional Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10739/) (2020)
- [node2vec: Scalable Feature Learning for Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.00653/) (2016)
- [SuperGlue: Learning Feature Matching with Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11763/) (2019)
- [SuperPoint: Self-Supervised Interest Point Detection and Description](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07629/) (2017)
- [LoFTR: Detector-Free Local Feature Matching with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00680/) (2021)
- [NetVLAD: CNN architecture for weakly supervised place recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.07247/) (2015)
- [MegaDepth: Learning Single-View Depth Prediction from Internet Photos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.00607/) (2018)
- [To prune, or not to prune: exploring the efficacy of pruning for model compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.01878/) (2017)
- [LightGlue: Local Feature Matching at Light Speed](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13643/) (2023)
- [From Coarse to Fine: Robust Hierarchical Localization at Large Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03506/) (2018)
- [Fine-tuning CNN Image Retrieval with No Human Annotation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.02512/) (2017)
- [INeRF: Inverting Neural Radiance Fields for Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05877/) (2020)
- [Model compression via distillation and quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.05668/) (2018)
- [DSAC - Differentiable RANSAC for Camera Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.05705/) (2016)
- [A General and Adaptive Robust Loss Function](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.03077/) (2017)
- [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)
- [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)
- [LaMAR: Benchmarking Localization and Mapping for Augmented Reality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.10770/) (2022)
- [Hierarchical Scene Coordinate Classification and Regression for Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.06216/) (2019)
- [Scene Coordinate Reconstruction: Posing of Image Collections via Incremental Learning of a Relocalizer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14351/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Seeing in the Dark: Benchmarking Egocentric 3D Vision with the Oxford Day-and-Night Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04224/) (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)
- [MACE: Mixture-of-Experts Accelerated Coordinate Encoding for Large-Scale Scene Localization and Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.14251/) (2025)
- [Visible Structure Retrieval for Lightweight Image-Based Relocalisation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.12503/) (2025)
- [ACE-SLAM: Scene Coordinate Regression for Neural Implicit Real-Time SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.14032/) (2025)
- [Robust Scene Coordinate Regression via Geometrically-Consistent Global Descriptors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.17226/) (2025)
- [L3:Scene-agnostic Visual Localization in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.07937/) (2026)
- [PlanaReLoc: Camera Relocalization in 3D Planar Primitives via Region-Based Structure Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.20818/) (2026)
- [LSGS-Loc: Towards Robust 3DGS-Based Visual Localization for Large-Scale UAV Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.05402/) (2026)
- [Continual Hand-Eye Calibration for Open-world Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.15814/) (2026)
- [LightLoc++: Sensor-Robust Representation Learning for Efficient Outdoor LiDAR Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.15317/) (2026)
- [AutoCompass: Accurate Visual Localization on Public Maps by Learning from Weak Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.02798/) (2026)
- [VideoReloc: Long-Term Indoor Video Relocalization against a Kilobyte-Scale Semantic Scene Graph](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.21804/) (2026)
- [NaCR: Visual Localization via NeRF-aided Camera Ray Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.25907/) (2026)
- [G2WAM: World Action Models for Efficient and Geometry Grounded Image-Goal Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.16558/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Learning-based visual localization methods that use scene coordinate regression (SCR) offer the advantage of smaller map sizes. However, on datasets with complex illumination changes or image-level ambiguities, it remains a less robust alternative to feature matching methods. This work aims to close the gap. We introduce a covisibility graph-based global encoding learning and data augmentation strategy, along with a depth-adjusted reprojection loss to facilitate implicit triangulation. Additionally, we revisit the network architecture and local feature extraction module. Our method achieves state-of-the-art on challenging large-scale datasets without relying on network ensembles or 3D supervision. On Aachen Day-Night, we are 10× more accurate than previous SCR methods with similar map sizes and require at least 5× smaller map sizes than any other SCR method while still delivering superior accuracy. Code is available at: https://github.com/cvg/scrstudio .