The image contains appearance from one viewpoint. Reconstructing depth can give it stereoscopic parallax, but does not recover the unseen backs of people or buildings. No software can promise an exact, fully explorable recreation from this picture alone.
| Software | What it contributes | Tradeoff |
|---|---|---|
| Apple SHARP | Predicts Gaussian geometry directly from the supplied image. Used for this reconstruction. | Designed for nearby views. Depth and hidden areas can be wrong. |
| World Labs Marble | Can generate a larger surrounding world and export splats. | New surfaces are invented. Generation and export require suitable account access. |
| Blender Cycles | Detailed offline rendering, animation and projection mapping. | The complete scene still needs to be modelled and textured. Offline image quality does not automatically transfer to standalone VR. |
| Spark + Three.js | Renders the splats in a browser with stereo WebXR and adjustable detail. | Headset frame rate depends on the scene, browser, and GPU. |
The final viewer combines Gaussian reconstruction with camera projection. A depth surface is derived from SHARP, and the unmodified original image is projected onto it. Triangles crossing sharp depth boundaries are omitted to avoid stretching texture across the gaps; the Gaussian reconstruction remains underneath. This preserves faces and architectural detail much better than the initial Gaussian-only preview. It provides nearby stereo depth, not a complete model of every object.
The reconstructed fire splats receive a subtle procedural displacement, complemented by gentle flame distortion in the projected texture. Small embers rise from a depth-derived anchor. Light pulses travel through bright regions in the original trails; extra moving points follow paths placed within the reconstruction. These are artistic animations. The people are static.
Desktop movement is restricted to a small area around the source camera. Quest head tracking remains physically correct: gently lean and look around from your starting spot. Walking far away reveals incomplete geometry. This is not a full 360° world.
The exact original image is available in the scene’s comparison control.
This is a noncommercial experiment in single-image novel-view reconstruction. The SHARP checkpoint is released under Apple’s research model license. A commercial production pipeline needs appropriate model rights. Model weights are not distributed with this experience. Spark and Three.js are MIT licensed.
Sources checked 8 September 2026. Performance on a physical Quest 3 must be measured on the headset; browser validation alone does not establish a headset frame rate.