RVizSplat: Visualize 3D Gaussian splats in RViz!
Render 6M+ splats alongside markers in RViz—now open source.
The Robotics team behind RVizSplat has launched version 1.0.0 of their open-source plugin that brings real-time 3D Gaussian splatting to the ROS ecosystem. The plugin integrates seamlessly into RViz, allowing users to render high-fidelity Gaussian splat scenes while simultaneously visualizing conventional markers like arrows, meshes, and occupancy grids. It supports streaming Gaussian splats over ROS2 topics and can directly load .ply files conforming to the INRIA 3DGS format. For resource-constrained environments, an option-order-independent transparency (OIT) rendering method bypasses per-frame sorting at the cost of visual quality.
Performance is a highlight: on an NVIDIA RTX 3060 or better, the plugin renders over 6 million splats at 40-60 FPS. Even on modern integrated GPUs, it maintains approximately 20 FPS for the same scene. For smaller scenes with 1-3 million splats, frame rates exceed 100 FPS. Sorting is handled by a GPU Radix sort (NVIDIA) or CPU PDQ sort, with an extendable interface for custom sorting algorithms. The package is well-tested on ROS2 Rolling and experimental on Jazzy and Kilted. The project is led by Videh Patel, Akash Chikhalikar, Aditya Mathur, and Suchetan Saravanan.
- 40-60 FPS on RTX 3060+ for scenes with >6M 3D Gaussian splats
- Supports streaming splats over ROS2 topics and loading INRIA-format .ply files
- OIT rendering option bypasses GPU sorting for resource-constrained hardware
Why It Matters
Bridges high-quality 3D reconstruction with robotics simulation, enabling real-time photorealistic scene visualization in ROS2.