Immersive Gaussian Splat tour of grace cathedral, San Francisco
Get picks like this daily. Today's launch numbers, the top launches, AI and tech news, and a daily opportunity pick, straight to your inbox.
Want to reach these readers? Sponsor an issue.
HN · launched Jul 20, 2026 · 263 upvotes (top 2%) · 0 views
Niche: 3d model and interactive web viewers · 54 launches, 5 in the last 7 days ▼ -44% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Travel & hospitality
- Content generation
- B2C
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 54 launches in 3d model and interactive web viewers →
Could you build this?
Partial The web viewer itself is straightforward using open-source WebGL/WebGPU Gaussian Splatting viewers, but capturing and training the high-fidelity 3D reconstruction requires specialized photogrammetry workflows.
What it would actually take: The frontend is easily built using standard libraries like `@mkkellogg/gaussian-splats-3d` or PlayCanvas. The hard part is the capture and data pipeline: capturing thousands of high-resolution, controlled exposure photographs and drone scans of Grace Cathedral, running them through COLMAP for Structure-from-Motion, and optimizing the 3DGS model via heavy GPU training pipelines. Producing the clean, artifact-free dataset requires physical on-site access, photogrammetry hardware, and 3D computer vision expertise.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: World Labs, Google Maps/Earth 3D views
Concerns raised: Firefox WebGPU support flaky on Windows, Complex patterns rendered as stretched, hazy ellipses, Lighting appears off, not capturing view-dependent specularity and reflections, Focal length perception feels incorrect
Feature requests: Anchor points on windows, Automation for tuning process, Procedure/tools documentation for creating city-scale captures
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 1703 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #52 of 1704 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 261 days after the earliest competitor.
- Turning a Gaussian Splat into a videogame · hn · 2026-04-23 · 236 upvotes · similarity 0.64
- SVO Voxelization for Gaussian Splat Collisions · hn · 2026-02-18 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.63
- Radix · hn · 2026-10-29 · 11 upvotes · similarity 0.62
- SplatAnything · github · 2026-11-08 · 205 upvotes · similarity 0.61
- SplatThumb · github · 2026-10-30 · 26 upvotes · similarity 0.61
- mw_splat · github · 2026-11-10 · 12 upvotes · similarity 0.58
- gaussian-splat-to-blender-nodes · github · 2026-10-24 · 65 upvotes · similarity 0.58
- Two browser games set inside one real Gaussian-splat scan · hn · 2026-10-12 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.57
The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.