# OceanXL: Large-scale Underwater 3D Gaussian Splatting via Block Partitioning and Adaptive Pruning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.29985 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.29985/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 24 of its 48 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Sep 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [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)
- [CompGS: Smaller and Faster Gaussian Splatting with Vector Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18159/) (2023)
- [WaterGAN: Unsupervised Generative Network to Enable Real-time Color Correction of Monocular Underwater Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.07392/) (2017)
- [Speedy-Splat: Fast 3D Gaussian Splatting with Sparse Pixels and Sparse Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00578/) (2024)
- [FlashGS: Efficient 3D Gaussian Splatting for Large-scale and High-resolution Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.07967/) (2024)
- [SeaThru-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields in Scattering Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07743/) (2023)
- [3DGS.zip: A survey on 3D Gaussian Splatting Compression Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09510/) (2024)
- [CityGaussianV2: Efficient and Geometrically Accurate Reconstruction for Large-Scale Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.00771/) (2024)
- [WaterSplatting: Fast Underwater 3D Scene Reconstruction Using Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08206/) (2024)
- [MaskGaussian: Adaptive 3D Gaussian Representation from Probabilistic Masks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.20522/) (2024)
- [SeaSplat: Representing Underwater Scenes with 3D Gaussian Splatting and a Physically Grounded Image Formation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.17345/) (2024)
- [UW-GS: Distractor-Aware 3D Gaussian Splatting for Enhanced Underwater Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.01517/) (2024)
- [Haze Visibility Enhancement: A Survey and Quantitative Benchmarking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.06235/) (2016)
- [RecGS: Removing Water Caustic with Recurrent Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.10318/) (2024)
- [Aquatic-GS: A Hybrid 3D Representation for Underwater Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.00239/) (2024)
- [BlockGaussian: Efficient Large-Scale Scene Novel View Synthesis via Adaptive Block-Based Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.09048/) (2025)
- [Eiffel Tower: A Deep-Sea Underwater Dataset for Long-Term Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05301/) (2023)
- [Visual enhancement and 3D representation for underwater scenes: a review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.01869/) (2025)
- [GS-Scale: Unlocking Large-Scale 3D Gaussian Splatting Training via Host Offloading](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.15645/) (2025)
- [RUSplatting: Robust 3D Gaussian Splatting for Sparse-View Underwater Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.15737/) (2025)
- [Holistic Large-Scale Scene Reconstruction via Mixed Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23280/) (2025)
- [From Restoration to Reconstruction: Rethinking 3D Gaussian Splatting for Underwater Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17789/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Underwater 3D reconstruction is critical for marine exploration, ecological monitoring, and subsea infrastructure inspection, yet remains challenging at large scale due to light attenuation, scattering, and limited capture coverage. While 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) enables high-quality real-time rendering, its application to large underwater scenes is constrained by high memory consumption and inefficient optimization over extensive areas. We propose OceanXL, a fast and scalable 3DGS-based framework for large-scale underwater reconstruction. OceanXL adopts a divide-and-conquer strategy, partitioning scenes into spatially coherent blocks to enable efficient optimization while preserving global geometric consistency. We further introduce an adaptive pruning scheme tailored to underwater conditions that removes redundant primitives, producing compact representations without sacrificing visual fidelity. Together, these components improve training efficiency and rendering performance for large scenes. We also introduce a large-scale underwater dataset covering diverse marine environments. Experiments on five large-scale scenes demonstrate favorable scalability, compactness, and efficiency--quality trade-offs over large-scene baselines. Controlled comparisons on the small-scale SeaThru-NeRF dataset further show competitive reconstruction quality with substantially smaller model sizes than underwater-specific methods.