Since it joined the Niantic family of products, Scaniverse has gotten rave reviews (4.8 stars on the App Store) as millions of people have used it to capture objects and places in 3D, for free, right on their phones. A few months ago, Scaniverse added on-device Gaussian splatting, a breakthrough approach that creates 360-degree, fully immersive 3D models that are more accurate, more vibrant, and faster to render than previous technologies. Our SVP of engineering and co-creator of Google Earth, Brian McClendon, calls Gaussian splats “the biggest change to computer graphics since real-time texture mapping in 1991.”

What’s new today is that Niantic Scaniverse takes splats beyond your phone and onto a map of the real world. They’ll join millions of previous contributions from Wayfarer, Ingress, and Pokémon GO players—those scans originally helped us create and verify cool places to go in our games, and now we’re reprocessing many of them into beautiful splats. This means there’s plenty to explore on the map already. (iPhone users will be able to post and browse scans to the map today; we’ll add the map to the Android version of Scaniverse soon.)

Making splats is unbelievably simple and impressive, requiring no 3D rendering experience. In about the time it takes to expose a Polaroid picture (raise your hand if you remember those), you can capture, generate, and share a fully immersive view of any public place, using nothing but your phone. After uploading to the map, share a cinematic video of your scene on social or pass the link around for friends to dive into. Scan your local park or scan vacation sights: it’s a way to save what’s important to you and share with the world at the same time.

(An important note: You can still use the Scaniverse app to scan personal things like a sushi platter. Everything stays on your phone until you share it, and nothing goes on the map without your permission. We’re also preserving mesh exports, which can be imported into a variety of 3D modeling apps.)

Here’s a quick walkthrough of how to scan your world:

1. Scan: move your camera around to capture all angles of an object or scene. (We made a video with some advice scanning techniques.)
2. Process: wait about a minute as the Gaussian splat reconstructs right on your phone
3. Share: upload to the map, or share a link or a video with friends
4. Repeat: keep scanning and sharing!

Join the New Niantic Scaniverse Community
Community is at the heart of Niantic’s games and our mission as a company, so we are excited to introduce the Scaniverse Community. Whatever you want to scan there are more people just like you, and everyone is welcome. Like the successful Wayfarer community, it lives on Discourse and ties to your Niantic account. Whether you’re an XR enthusiast, casual 3D photographer or an explorer who loves to share your new 3D creations, we can’t wait to see what the world’s newest cartographic community creates and shares.

Calling all Developers and Creators – Niantic Studio Supports Scaniverse Splats
Just as digital maps have been the foundation for incredible creativity, splats from Scaniverse contributors around the world can now be the canvas for spatial mapping. Today, we also announced support for splats in Niantic Studio, our all-new WebXR editor and web gaming engine from Niantic 8th Wall. Developers can now create or discover splats in Scaniverse and upload them to Niantic Studio to use as a canvas for their web games and VR experiences. Combined with our powerful VPS with centimeter-level precision, developers now have the tools to make the real world the backdrop of their AR and VR experiences. Niantic got its start developing cloud-based games for the real world; now, we’re working towards modeling the world in 3D as a canvas for everyone else.

So let’s get splatting! Download Scaniverse 4 today at the App Store. We can’t wait to see what you share on the map.