Free-View XR Tours Using 3D Gaussian Splatting with an Avatar Guide
The 33rd IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces · Daegu, Korea · Booth #211
School of Computing and Information Systems · The University of Melbourne
// abstract
XR tours are often built from manual 3D authoring, 3D scanning, photogrammetry, or fixed-view 360° video, which can be time-consuming to produce or limit free exploration. 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) offers photoreal free-view rendering from captured imagery, yet its use in end-to-end XR touring experiences — especially with lightweight in-scene guidance — remains underexplored.
We present an XR tour system for free-view exploration of 3DGS scenes that combines controller-based 6-DoF navigation with an avatar guide delivering proximity-triggered text-to-speech narration. We demonstrate the system in a public setting and report observations from a case study with more than 50 participants.