> you can't really get below the level of the buildings before the gaussian splatting is very obvious.

True. If you bring the viewpoint down to near street level and look horizontally, it's worse than traditional photogrammetry methods.

I've been looking for algorithms like this for representing distant regions in virtual worlds. Open Drone Map can do a good job, sometimes, but it really needs a cleanup pass.

We're early days. Models will soon interpolate all of that. Eventually in real time.

I wouldn't knock the research. The results look impressive to me.

That's a matter of data, and this looks promising to me. If instead of satellite images they'd feed it drone shots they could probably get down to a level of detail that becomes actually immersive and would be way beyond the digital twins we currently have.