Realtime Lighting in Gaussian Splatting Scenes using Geometry-Based Light Probe Placement

To achieve realistic lighting in augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and similar applications especially with stringent realtime constraints, environmental lighting is often captured and stored in light probes, which are strategically placed throughout the scene. This study explores the optimal positioning of light probes to enhance the realism of extended realities. A novel spatial geometry-based method for light probe placement is proposed and compared against three alternative techniques, evaluated across various real-world environment reconstructions with different probe densities. The findings demonstrate that the careful placement of a minimal number of probes can effectively replicate realistic lighting in complex environments. The geometry-based optimization method outperforms the alternatives in indoor environments by providing an efficient realtime solution with fewer probes. This optimized approach is suitable for direct implementation in realtime applications such as AR, VR, game development, and virtual productions, offering both improved lighting realism and optimized computational efficiency.