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When 3D Gaussian Splatting Recovers Real Surfaces

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Computer Science > Machine Learning

arXiv:2608.30054 (cs)
[Submitted on 30 Aug 2026]

Title:When 3D Gaussian Splatting Recovers Real Surfaces

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Abstract:When does 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) recover the true scene surface rather than just overfitting view-dependent appearance? We answer this by developing a mathematical framework based on a first-hit rendering abstraction that cleanly isolates geometry from appearance. We prove that geometric misalignment forcefully converts spatial textures into high-frequency angular signals via parallax. This establishes a strict identifiability window: if angular capacity is bounded, surface-consistent solutions are mathematically preferred; if unrestricted, the same images can be perfectly explained by an incorrect, opaque billboard geometry. Experiments on synthetic stress tests confirm this prediction, showing billboard failures emerge precisely at high angular capacities. Conversely, in the real-world datasets we evaluate under standard capture protocols, reconstructions remain surface-consistent even at high SH degrees, which is consistent with the prediction that rich spatial texture can push billboard solutions outside the tested angular-capacity range.
Comments: Accepted at ECCV 2026. 30 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; includes supplementary material
Subjects: Machine Learning (cs.LG); Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV)
Cite as: arXiv:2608.30054 [cs.LG]
  (or arXiv:2608.30054v1 [cs.LG] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.30054
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

Submission history

From: Songhe Wang [view email]
[v1] Sun, 30 Aug 2026 21:30:26 UTC (3,503 KB)
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