# STARS-GS: Structure-Aware Regularized Gaussian Splatting for Large-Scale Aerial Surface Reconstruction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.03447 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.03447/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 34 of its 69 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Sep 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [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)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [2D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17888/) (2024)
- [Volume Rendering of Neural Implicit Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12052/) (2021)
- [Block-NeRF: Scalable Large Scene Neural View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05263/) (2022)
- [SuGaR: Surface-Aligned Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Mesh Reconstruction and High-Quality Mesh Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12775/) (2023)
- [Neuralangelo: High-Fidelity Neural Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03092/) (2023)
- [Mega-NeRF: Scalable Construction of Large-Scale NeRFs for Virtual Fly-Throughs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10703/) (2021)
- [VastGaussian: Vast 3D Gaussians for Large Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17427/) (2024)
- [High-quality Surface Reconstruction using Gaussian Surfels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.17774/) (2024)
- [DN-Splatter: Depth and Normal Priors for Gaussian Splatting and Meshing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17822/) (2024)
- [Rethinking Inductive Biases for Surface Normal Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.00712/) (2024)
- [Capturing, Reconstructing, and Simulating: the UrbanScene3D Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.04286/) (2021)
- [Grid-guided Neural Radiance Fields for Large Urban Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14001/) (2023)
- [GS2Mesh: Surface Reconstruction from Gaussian Splatting via Novel Stereo Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01810/) (2024)
- [RoutedFusion: Learning Real-time Depth Map Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.04388/) (2020)
- [GeoGaussian: Geometry-aware Gaussian Splatting for Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11324/) (2024)
- [Revisiting Domain Generalized Stereo Matching Networks from a Feature Consistency Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.10887/) (2022)
- [Surface Reconstruction from Point Clouds: A Survey and a Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.02413/) (2022)
- [BNV-Fusion: Dense 3D Reconstruction using Bi-level Neural Volume Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01139/) (2022)
- [Ref-GS: Directional Factorization for 2D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00905/) (2024)
- [Trim 3D Gaussian Splatting for Accurate Geometry Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07499/) (2024)
- [Momentum-GS: Momentum Gaussian Self-Distillation for High-Quality Large Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04887/) (2024)
- [Probabilistic Volumetric Fusion for Dense Monocular SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.01276/) (2022)
- [RTR-GS: 3D Gaussian Splatting for Inverse Rendering with Radiance Transfer and Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.07733/) (2025)
- [BlockGaussian: Efficient Large-Scale Scene Novel View Synthesis via Adaptive Block-Based Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.09048/) (2025)
- [Topology-Aware 3D Gaussian Splatting: Leveraging Persistent Homology for Optimized Structural Integrity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16619/) (2024)
- [HaloGS: Loose Coupling of Compact Geometry and Gaussian Splats for 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20267/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large-scale 3D surface reconstruction from aerial imagery is fundamental to geospatial mapping and urban modeling. Recent advances in 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) have demonstrated considerable potential for this task. However, existing methods still face three major challenges in large and complex scenes: scene partitioning may split continuous scene elements across independently optimized sub-regions; geometric constraints mainly focus on the attributes of individual Gaussians while overlooking their local organization; and uniform regularization struggles to accommodate heterogeneous geometric structures. To address these issues, we propose STARS-GS, a structure-aware 3DGS framework for large-scale surface reconstruction. First, we introduce a structure-aware scene partitioning strategy that better preserves continuous scene structures during partitioning and reduces cross-region geometric inconsistencies and stitching artifacts through boundary refinement. Second, we develop neighborhood-aware Gaussian organization that extends geometric constraints from individual primitives to their neighborhood organization, encouraging Gaussians to better conform to local surface geometry. Third, we introduce adaptive surface regularization that adjusts the regularization strength according to local geometric characteristics, promoting geometric consistency in structured regions while preserving plausible variations in unstructured regions. Extensive experiments on large-scale aerial photogrammetry benchmarks demonstrate that STARS-GS consistently outperforms the evaluated Gaussian-based methods in surface reconstruction. It increases the average F1-score from 0.640 for the second-best method to 0.698, corresponding to a relative improvement of approximately 9.1%, demonstrating effective improvements in geometric accuracy and surface completeness.