Gaussian Splatting offers a different way to represent a subject in space. Rather than confining an experience to the viewpoint chosen by a camera, it helps reconstruct a scene that can be considered from multiple angles. That makes it relevant to Cybel’Art’s work on more spatial digital experiences within its augmented solutions.
From a video frame to an explorable volume
Conventional video records a flat view. Even in a 360° format, the viewer’s movement is organised around the perspective planned at capture. Volumetric capture instead seeks to retain information about appearance and position in three dimensions. The aim is not simply to watch an image, but to investigate a spatial representation.
Photogrammetry has long been a central route to producing 3D models from many photographs. It remains valuable, especially for still subjects. Yet motion, hair, fabrics and reflective materials can make both the creation of a clean mesh and its real-time display more demanding.
Soft splats instead of rigid polygons
Gaussian Splatting does not define a scene as one polygonal surface. It composes it from a very large number of soft, semi-transparent primitives called Gaussians. Each one can carry a position, size, orientation, colour and opacity. For a chosen viewpoint, the renderer blends the overlapping elements to produce the image.
This method can convey details that are difficult to reduce into a mesh, including strands of hair, the glint on an instrument or the texture of fabric. It may also support more responsive exploration of a volumetric scene where the technical conditions allow. It is not, however, a promise of the same result on every device, nor an automatic measure of a capture’s faithfulness.
icologram®: a capture, not an invented avatar
Within the icologram® protocol, Cybel’Art presents this rendering logic as a way to encounter an artist captured in volume. The project therefore distinguishes a recorded performer from an avatar generated from scratch. Philippe Entremont was captured in La Chaux-de-Fonds in mid-November 2019; Henri Dès was captured in Grenoble on 2 and 3 November 2021.
Cybel’Art’s line, “We Humanize Digital.”, sets the direction: use technology in service of artistic presence without treating a capture as a digitised person. Gaussian Splatting is a representation and rendering process; by itself, it does not certify a work’s origin, integrity or context. Those elements require separate documentation.
Viewing routes to place in context
The source associates augmented-reality viewing with Real Illusions and virtual-reality experience with Virtual Hall®. The first public Virtual Hall® trials with the OSR are documented in January 2025. These references describe routes and projects presented by Cybel’Art; they do not assert universal availability or announce new functions. For the wider brand ecosystem, see Cybel’Art’s brands.
The value of Gaussian Splatting, then, is not a magic promise. It supplies a visual language for approaching performances and objects with more depth, while recognising that an experience also gains meaning from the work itself, its context and its mediation.
Editorial adaptation of the article by Pierluigi Christophe Orunesu, originally published on Substack on 1 August 2026. Read the original article on Substack