# VRSplat: Fast and Robust Gaussian Splatting for Virtual Reality

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.10144 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10144/

## Key facts

- Cited by 17 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 23 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 May 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [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)
- [LightGaussian: Unbounded 3D Gaussian Compression with 15x Reduction and 200+ FPS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17245/) (2023)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting as Markov Chain Monte Carlo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09591/) (2024)
- [A Hierarchical 3D Gaussian Representation for Real-Time Rendering of Very Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12080/) (2024)
- [Mini-Splatting: Representing Scenes with a Constrained Number of Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14166/) (2024)
- [VastGaussian: Vast 3D Gaussians for Large Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17427/) (2024)
- [Taming 3DGS: High-Quality Radiance Fields with Limited Resources](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.15643/) (2024)
- [VR-GS: A Physical Dynamics-Aware Interactive Gaussian Splatting System in Virtual Reality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.16663/) (2024)
- [3D Gaussian Ray Tracing: Fast Tracing of Particle Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07090/) (2024)
- [RadSplat: Radiance Field-Informed Gaussian Splatting for Robust Real-Time Rendering with 900+ FPS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.13806/) (2024)
- [StopThePop: Sorted Gaussian Splatting for View-Consistent Real-time Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.00525/) (2024)
- [VR-NeRF: High-Fidelity Virtualized Walkable Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.02542/) (2023)
- [FoV-NeRF: Foveated Neural Radiance Fields for Virtual Reality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16365/) (2021)
- [On the Error Analysis of 3D Gaussian Splatting and an Optimal Projection Strategy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.00752/) (2024)
- [SNeRF: Stylized Neural Implicit Representations for 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.02363/) (2022)
- [Gaze-Contingent Ocular Parallax Rendering for Virtual Reality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.09740/) (2019)
- [Towards a quality metric for dense light fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.07576/) (2017)
- [Gaze-Contingent Retinal Speckle Suppression for Perceptually-Matched Foveated Holographic Displays](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.06192/) (2021)
- [Noise-based Enhancement for Foveated Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.04455/) (2022)
- [Towards Attention-aware Foveated Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.01368/) (2023)

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

- [Faster-GS: Analyzing and Improving Gaussian Splatting Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.09999/) (2026)
- [SOF: Sorted Opacity Fields for Fast Unbounded Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.19139/) (2025)
- [From Coarse to Fine: Learnable Discrete Wavelet Transforms for Efficient 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.23042/) (2025)
- [Confidence-Based Mesh Extraction from 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.24725/) (2026)
- [Fading the Digital Ink: A Universal Black-Box Attack Framework for 3DGS Watermarking Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.07263/) (2025)
- [GS-Verse: Mesh-based Gaussian Splatting for Physics-aware Interaction in Virtual Reality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.11878/) (2025)
- [Can Protective Watermarking Safeguard the Copyright of 3D Gaussian Splatting?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.22262/) (2025)
- [Splannequin: Freezing Monocular Mannequin-Challenge Footage with Dual-Detection Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.05113/) (2025)
- [Sparse Code Uplifting for Efficient 3D Language Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13600/) (2026)
- [The Impact and Outlook of 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.26694/) (2025)
- [Hybrid Foveated Path Tracing with Peripheral Gaussians for Immersive Anatomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.22026/) (2026)
- [VRGaussianAvatar: Integrating 3D Gaussian Avatars into VR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01674/) (2026)
- [DeGS: A Scalable 3DGS Architecture via Decoupled Workload Parsing and Reorganization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.02099/) (2026)
- [Difix3D-W: Distractor-Free Few-Shot 3D Gaussian Splatting in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.27422/) (2026)
- [UniTriSplat: A Unified 3D Gaussian Splatting Framework with Uniform Spherical Rasterization for Universal Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.29794/) (2026)
- [NGS-Marker: Robust Native Watermarking for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.17447/) (2026)
- [CognitiveReality: Robot-Agnostic Semantic Gaussian Mapping with an LLM Agent for Immersive Collaborative VR Teleoperation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.31418/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) has rapidly become a leading technique for novel-view synthesis, providing exceptional performance through efficient software-based GPU rasterization. Its versatility enables real-time applications, including on mobile and lower-powered devices. However, 3DGS faces key challenges in virtual reality (VR): (1) temporal artifacts, such as popping during head movements, (2) projection-based distortions that result in disturbing and view-inconsistent floaters, and (3) reduced framerates when rendering large numbers of Gaussians, falling below the critical threshold for VR. Compared to desktop environments, these issues are drastically amplified by large field-of-view, constant head movements, and high resolution of head-mounted displays (HMDs). In this work, we introduce VRSplat: we combine and extend several recent advancements in 3DGS to address challenges of VR holistically. We show how the ideas of Mini-Splatting, StopThePop, and Optimal Projection can complement each other, by modifying the individual techniques and core 3DGS rasterizer. Additionally, we propose an efficient foveated rasterizer that handles focus and peripheral areas in a single GPU launch, avoiding redundant computations and improving GPU utilization. Our method also incorporates a fine-tuning step that optimizes Gaussian parameters based on StopThePop depth evaluations and Optimal Projection. We validate our method through a controlled user study with 25 participants, showing a strong preference for VRSplat over other configurations of Mini-Splatting. VRSplat is the first, systematically evaluated 3DGS approach capable of supporting modern VR applications, achieving 72+ FPS while eliminating popping and stereo-disrupting floaters.