Gaussian splatting is pretty cool
Very cool work.<p>As a bit of tangent (but wondering whether someone can answer) - the article also makes mention of point based rendering and indeed the fact is has been a staple of particle systems for a long time. However, especially with recent games, I have noticed (purely subjectively) a very subtle shift to a new style of particle systems which are on the one hand fully point oriented (compared to (textured) fragments) but on the other behave more like a physics systems.<p>Examples:<p>- Hogwarts (heavily): <a href="https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/original/1816/18167535/4097726-hogwartslegacybestspellsallspellsguideunforgivablecurses-1.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/original/1816/18167535/40...</a>
- Forspoken (heavily): <a href="https://oyster.ignimgs.com/mediawiki/apis.ign.com/project-athia/0/04/FdlsymrXwAgCXE4.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://oyster.ignimgs.com/mediawiki/apis.ign.com/project-at...</a>
- Starfield (though more rarely): <a href="https://dotesports.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/temple-location-Starfield.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://dotesports.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/temple-loc...</a>
- AC6
- FF16 (heavily)<p>It's more obvious when you see it 'in motion'. The common denominator seems to be particles as colored transparent points with physics. Especially on console systems it seems that developers are using this for very cheap (CPU-wise, all on GPU) effects.<p>Anyone in gamedev who has some insight in this?