# D2GS: Dense Depth Regularization for LiDAR-free Urban Scene Reconstruction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.25173 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.25173/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 37 of its 40 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Oct 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 37)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Scalability in Perception for Autonomous Driving: Waymo Open Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04838/) (2019)
- [NeRF in the Wild: Neural Radiance Fields for Unconstrained Photo Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02268/) (2020)
- [Depth-supervised NeRF: Fewer Views and Faster Training for Free](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02791/) (2021)
- [Block-NeRF: Scalable Large Scene Neural View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05263/) (2022)
- [MVSplat: Efficient 3D Gaussian Splatting from Sparse Multi-View Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14627/) (2024)
- [Mega-NeRF: Scalable Construction of Large-Scale NeRFs for Virtual Fly-Throughs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10703/) (2021)
- [Metric3D: Towards Zero-shot Metric 3D Prediction from A Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10984/) (2023)
- [DrivingGaussian: Composite Gaussian Splatting for Surrounding Dynamic Autonomous Driving Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07920/) (2023)
- [Repurposing Diffusion-Based Image Generators for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02145/) (2023)
- [Neural Scene Graphs for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.10379/) (2020)
- [UniSim: A Neural Closed-Loop Sensor Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.01898/) (2023)
- [DepthSplat: Connecting Gaussian Splatting and Depth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13862/) (2024)
- [FSGS: Real-Time Few-shot View Synthesis using Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00451/) (2023)
- [DNGaussian: Optimizing Sparse-View 3D Gaussian Radiance Fields with Global-Local Depth Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06912/) (2024)
- [SparseNeRF: Distilling Depth Ranking for Few-shot Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.16196/) (2023)
- [Street Gaussians: Modeling Dynamic Urban Scenes with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01339/) (2024)
- [EmerNeRF: Emergent Spatial-Temporal Scene Decomposition via Self-Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.02077/) (2023)
- [UniDepthV2: Universal Monocular Metric Depth Estimation Made Simpler](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20110/) (2025)
- [MARS: An Instance-aware, Modular and Realistic Simulator for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15058/) (2023)
- [OmniRe: Omni Urban Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.16760/) (2024)
- [SUDS: Scalable Urban Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14536/) (2023)
- [NeuralLift-360: Lifting An In-the-wild 2D Photo to A 3D Object with 360deg Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.16431/) (2022)
- [Periodic Vibration Gaussian: Dynamic Urban Scene Reconstruction and Real-time Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18561/) (2023)
- [ReconX: Reconstruct Any Scene from Sparse Views with Video Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.16767/) (2024)
- [SparseGS: Sparse View Synthesis using 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00206/) (2023)
- [DriveDreamer4D: World Models Are Effective Data Machines for 4D Driving Scene Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13571/) (2024)
- [S-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields for Street Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.00749/) (2023)
- [3DGS-Enhancer: Enhancing Unbounded 3D Gaussian Splatting with View-consistent 2D Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.16266/) (2024)
- [textitS3Gaussian: Self-Supervised Street Gaussians for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20323/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [EnerGS: Energy-Based Gaussian Splatting with Partial Geometric Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.26238/) (2026)
- [ConFixGS: Learning to Fix Feedforward 3D Gaussian Splatting with Confidence-Aware Diffusion Priors in Driving Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.09688/) (2026)
- [MM-TRELLIS: Point-Cloud Guided Multi-Modal 3D Vehicle Generation in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.24301/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recently, Gaussian Splatting (GS) has shown great potential for urban scene reconstruction in the field of autonomous driving. However, current urban scene reconstruction methods often depend on multimodal sensors as inputs, textiti.e. LiDAR and images. Though the geometry prior provided by LiDAR point clouds can largely mitigate ill-posedness in reconstruction, acquiring such accurate LiDAR data is still challenging in practice: i) precise spatiotemporal calibration between LiDAR and other sensors is required, as they may not capture data simultaneously; ii) reprojection errors arise from spatial misalignment when LiDAR and cameras are mounted at different locations. To avoid the difficulty of acquiring accurate LiDAR depth, we propose D2GS, a LiDAR-free urban scene reconstruction framework. In this work, we obtain geometry priors that are as effective as LiDAR while being denser and more accurate. First, we initialize a dense point cloud by back-projecting multi-view metric depth predictions. This point cloud is then optimized by a Progressive Pruning strategy to improve the global consistency. Second, we jointly refine Gaussian geometry and predicted dense metric depth via a Depth Enhancer. Specifically, we leverage diffusion priors from a depth foundation model to enhance the depth maps rendered by Gaussians. In turn, the enhanced depths provide stronger geometric constraints during Gaussian training. Finally, we improve the accuracy of ground geometry by constraining the shape and normal attributes of Gaussians within road regions. Extensive experiments on the Waymo dataset demonstrate that our method consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods, producing more accurate geometry even when compared with those using ground-truth LiDAR data.