Fable created novel 4D splat format

(adamraudonis.github.io)

105 points | by adamraudonis 9 hours ago

10 comments

  • delichon 3 hours ago
    A gaussian gif. Coming to porn sites soon. The file format name works for them. But imagine whole movies shot in this format. The fly-on-the-wall fantasy of movies, without being locked in place for the whole shot. Narrative possibilities like being able to examine just how close the Tyrannosaurus Rex is to your rear view mirror. Clues in a mystery only visible on rotation. Hidden bonus scenes.

    I hope this catches on just to be able to watch the evolution of cameras to capture it.

    • orbital-decay 2 hours ago
      >imagine whole movies shot in this format. The fly-on-the-wall fantasy of movies, without being locked in place for the whole shot.

      That would be terrible. Framing is the major expressive feature in cinematography, and any interactive format needs a lot more thought put into it than just having a free camera. Literally the worst of both worlds.

      Light field video streaming is a thing, however it's pretty niche. OTOY pioneered holographic codecs and light field videos with some degree of freedom and a sense of depth more than a decade ago.

      • jayd16 1 hour ago
        Not terrible, per se, but not a movie. There are other formats that fit the task better like immersive theater and theater in the round.

        This has been extensively explored with VR and games, though.

    • andybak 2 hours ago
      Ok but you're commenting on the general concept of animated gaussian splats. That's existed for a while and it's unrelated to what this actual post is about which is a new compression method.
      • delichon 2 hours ago
        I suppose it's the difficulty in recording them rather than the file size that has kept them experimental. But that's not a problem for AI generated splats. GenAI sites could have a toggle from image to video to splat4d.
    • jfim 1 hour ago
      That already exists though. I believe Braindance VR uses a rig with a couple dozen cameras to capture the same scene from multiple viewpoints then converts it to a gaussian splat that can be walked around.
  • goosethe 1 hour ago
    I feel like I did this one already: https://github.com/seanwevans/4splat
    • noosphr 9 minutes ago
      Well there's your problem, you didn't say you wasted a million dollars doing something an expert can do in an afternoon.
    • BretonForearm 1 hour ago
      spatiotemporal data
  • chmod775 1 hour ago
    The application is cool, but there is little novelty here. All of the employed techniques are well-established.

    I suggest removing "novel" from the title unless you wish to seriously disappoint some people.

  • Lucasoato 4 hours ago
    Doesn’t with for me, iOS Safari :/
    • nomel 3 hours ago
      Works on my old iPhone. The video is a splat. Click the interact button to change perspective.
      • LudwigNagasena 31 minutes ago
        Moving camera completely distorts the video both on my Mac and iPhone.
    • oldsecondhand 2 hours ago
      Me neither on Chrome on Win10. "WEBGPU initialization failed".
    • skybrian 2 hours ago
      Works on my iPad using Chrome or Safari.
      • filoleg 7 minutes ago
        Safari on iPhone, working as intended for me as well.
  • ACCount37 1 hour ago
    Does switching scenes in the demo work for anyone? There are what, 3 hidden panels in the HTML there? But none of them have a "switch scenes" button.
  • reassess_blind 1 hour ago
    Whats the 4 in the "4D" here? A layman like me thinks this looks 3D.
    • jasonjmcghee 1 hour ago
      time
      • reassess_blind 1 hour ago
        Why is it we don't call videogames "4D" if they also operate through time?
        • dietr1ch 1 hour ago
          I guess if moving through time other than forward like normal it'd justify calling time a new dimension on which you can play on.

          Otherwise, we just focus on the 3D space they represent and take time for granted

        • dullcrisp 1 hour ago
          Animations are four-dimensional. Colored animations are seven-dimensional. More if they include surface normals or lighting information. Simple.
        • jasonjmcghee 1 hour ago
          3D Gaussian splats are still images of 3D space / photogrammetry

          So I'm guessing it came from representing the additional dimension

  • adamraudonis 9 hours ago
    See repo for prompt. Feel free to contribute to format or benchmarking. MIT Open Source.
    • noosphr 7 minutes ago
      Software created by algorithms is public domain.
    • diimdeep 5 hours ago
      Publish full session md, you can export them with `uvx claude-code-log@latest --tui`
      • reassess_blind 53 minutes ago
        Somehow that feels too private to want to share.
      • tjuene 3 hours ago
        warning: don't just run random commands in your terminal
        • thehamkercat 2 hours ago
          specially not npm/python related packages with @latest

          Yes please give me the latest supply-chain attacks.

        • fragmede 1 hour ago
          too late, I already ran curl | sudo bash
  • mistahchris 3 hours ago
    wow… this is seriously cool.
  • xiaoyin903 8 hours ago
  • gcr 3 hours ago
    Something’s way off with these numbers. The page says it encodes video at 640MB/s which is quite large even for 4D data and doesn’t match the filesize of the demo splat (7.4MB / 2sec, or ≈3.4MB/s).

    In fact they say the raw file size of the demo splat was only 427MB, so maybe the 640MB/s was a statement about encode speed? Why write it that way instead of “this demo splat was encoded in 0.6sec” or even just “the time to produce the original splat took longer than the time to encode this video format”?

    • danielheath 2 hours ago
      “encodes video at 640MB/s” is the common way for codec authors to talk about performance