# LSGS-Loc: Towards Robust 3DGS-Based Visual Localization for Large-Scale UAV Scenarios

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.05402 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.05402/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 26 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Apr 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [SuperPoint: Self-Supervised Interest Point Detection and Description](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07629/) (2017)
- [From Coarse to Fine: Robust Hierarchical Localization at Large Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03506/) (2018)
- [INeRF: Inverting Neural Radiance Fields for Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05877/) (2020)
- [gsplat: An Open-Source Library for Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.06765/) (2024)
- [AnyLoc: Towards Universal Visual Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.00688/) (2023)
- [Accelerated Coordinate Encoding: Learning to Relocalize in Minutes using RGB and Poses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14059/) (2023)
- [DFNet: Enhance Absolute Pose Regression with Direct Feature Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.00559/) (2022)
- [Reloc3r: Large-Scale Training of Relative Camera Pose Regression for Generalizable, Fast, and Accurate Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.08376/) (2024)
- [GLACE: Global Local Accelerated Coordinate Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04340/) (2024)
- [CROSSFIRE: Camera Relocalization On Self-Supervised Features from an Implicit Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04869/) (2023)
- [Map-Relative Pose Regression for Visual Re-Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09884/) (2024)
- [The NeRFect Match: Exploring NeRF Features for Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09577/) (2024)
- [GS-CPR: Efficient Camera Pose Refinement via 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.11085/) (2024)
- [NeRF-Loc: Visual Localization with Conditional Neural Radiance Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07979/) (2023)
- [6DGS: 6D Pose Estimation from a Single Image and a 3D Gaussian Splatting Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15484/) (2024)
- [PNeRFLoc: Visual Localization with Point-based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10649/) (2023)
- [GauU-Scene V2: Assessing the Reliability of Image-Based Metrics with Expansive Lidar Image Dataset Using 3DGS and NeRF](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04880/) (2024)
- [R-SCoRe: Revisiting Scene Coordinate Regression for Robust Large-Scale Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.01421/) (2025)
- [GSplatLoc: Grounding Keypoint Descriptors into 3D Gaussian Splatting for Improved Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.16502/) (2024)
- [From Sparse to Dense: Camera Relocalization with Scene-Specific Detector from Feature Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.19358/) (2025)
- [GSLoc: Visual Localization with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.06165/) (2024)
- [HGSLoc: 3DGS-based Heuristic Camera Pose Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.10925/) (2024)
- [LoGS: Visual Localization via Gaussian Splatting with Fewer Training Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.11505/) (2024)
- [GSVisLoc: Generalizable Visual Localization for Gaussian Splatting Scene Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.18242/) (2025)
- [3DGS_LSR:Large_Scale Relocation for Autonomous Driving Based on 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05661/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Visual localization in large-scale UAV scenarios is a critical capability for autonomous systems, yet it remains challenging due to geometric complexity and environmental variations. While 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) has emerged as a promising scene representation, existing 3DGS-based visual localization methods struggle with robust pose initialization and sensitivity to rendering artifacts in large-scale settings. To address these limitations, we propose LSGS-Loc, a novel visual localization pipeline tailored for large-scale 3DGS scenes. Specifically, we introduce a scale-aware pose initialization strategy that combines scene-agnostic relative pose estimation with explicit 3DGS scale constraints, enabling geometrically grounded localization without scene-specific training. Furthermore, in the pose refinement, to mitigate the impact of reconstruction artifacts such as blur and floaters, we develop a Laplacian-based reliability masking mechanism that guides photometric refinement toward high-quality regions. Extensive experiments on large-scale UAV benchmarks demonstrate that our method achieves state-of-the-art accuracy and robustness for unordered image queries, significantly outperforming existing 3DGS-based approaches. Code is available at: https://github.com/xzhang-z/LSGS-Loc