Once the Gaussian Splats are computed (whether via ML or classical optimisation), they’re very efficient to render (similar to 3D meshes used in games). High fps isn’t incredible.
Having said that (I have yet to read the paper), "efficiency" probably refers to the first part (calculating the gaussians in the first place) not rendering.
They’re not “very efficient “. They have a significant amount of overdraw due to their transparency and will be a lot more inefficient if you’re only considering material-less surface representation.
They’re more efficient to capture however . They’re also more constant in their render time, but meshes will easily be faster in most scenes cases, but scale worse with complexity.
The “efficiency” of splats is more about the material response and capturing complexity there, than it is about geometric representation.
You are correct. I was confusing this technique with Novel View Synthesis through diffusion (recent paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.06157) where inference means generating frames rather than points.
Having said that (I have yet to read the paper), "efficiency" probably refers to the first part (calculating the gaussians in the first place) not rendering.