From 360-degree video to 3D world: Insta360 cooperates with Splatica
Camera manufacturer Insta360 and software company Splatica are cooperating to transform short 360-degree videos into photorealistic and explorable 3D scenes.
On its website, Splatica presents some examples of volumetric, digital replicas in the form of 3D tours.
(Image: Splatica)
The Chinese manufacturer of 360-degree cameras, Insta360, and the London-based software company, Splatica, are joining forces. Both companies have announced a strategic partnership to reconstruct 3D scenes from short, all-around videos.
Behind the cumbersome term “3D Gaussian Splatting” (3DGS for short) lies a still quite new process that allows astonishingly photorealistic, three-dimensional, and explorable scenes to be calculated from normal video recordings.
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From Industry to Hobby Application
Splatica's software was initially intended for virtual tours, site inspections, and film preparation. In his LinkedIn profile, Splatica mentions high-quality digital representations of real locations for virtual production and location scouting. The company now emphasizes its focus on robotics and physical AI on its website.
3D scenes are used in simulation environments such as Isaac Sim and Omniverse for training robots in digital copies of real environments. Gaussian splats are used, for example, in simulations for self-driving cars or flying robots and in training physical AI for robotics, such as when a robot needs to learn to move through warehouses, offices, or apartments.
Anyone who wanted to create such 3D content until now had to dig deep into their pockets and bring a lot of time. Multi-camera setups, manual photogrammetry, or laser scanner setups often led to incomplete data, long processing times, and high technical hurdles. The partnership between Insta360 and Splatica aims to significantly reduce the effort: record a short 360-degree video, upload the file, and let the platform do everything automatically.
What Splatica Does
First, you record a short 360-degree video with an Insta360 camera, such as the X5 or the Antigravity A1 drone. Splatica's online platform then transforms the material into 3DGS scenes and digital twins. It is designed for speed and simplicity and is intended to convert the recorded material in five minutes. Splatica uses the full spherical coverage for greater completeness and visual detail.
The finished environment is ready for interactive web viewers, VR environments, and export for Unity, Unreal Engine, Nvidia Isaac Sim, and Omniverse. On the website operated by Antigravity, the partners show an environment of the ruined city of Pompeii as an example.
Availability
Insta360 and Splatica have not yet announced a price. According to the Antigravity website, as part of the joint promotion around Project Eternal, the first 1000 participants will receive a complete scene for free. The project started on April 24, 2026.
(akr)
