Paper accepted @ IEEE Visual Communication and Image Processing 2026

Title: 3D Gaussian Splatting Rendering Performance Trade-offs on the Meta Quest 3

Authors: Milad Ghanbari, Hadi Amirpour, Christian Timmerer

Abstract

3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) is a compelling technique for real-time view synthesis, but its computational demands pose significant challenges for deployment on resource-constrained standalone eXtended Reality (XR) headsets. This paper presents a systematic performance study of 3DGS rendering on the Meta Quest 3, using a custom interactive tool that enables real-time control of render resolution scale, splat density, and frame rate cap through an in-world interface. We evaluate 180 conditions formed by the factorial combination of six resolution scales (0.5–1.0), ten splat density levels (10–100%), and three camera-to-object distances (0.7 m, 1.1 m, 1.5 m), with each condition repeated ten times. Performance metrics — GPU time, frame rate, GPU utilization, CPU utilization, power draw, and stale frame count — are captured via Meta’s Oculus Virtual Reality (OVR) Metrics Tool at a fixed target frame rate of 72 Hz. The results show that resolution scale is the dominant GPU cost driver due to the quadratic growth in pixel count, while splat density reduction is only an effective performance lever when GPU time is already close to the 72 Hz frame budget. Power draw is determined by total GPU work per time unit rather than cost per frame, which creates a counterintuitive relationship where lower resolution scales draw more power by enabling higher frame rates. These findings expose the interdependence between resolution scale, splat density, frame rate, and power, and establish a quantitative foundation for rendering parameter selection in 3DGS applications on standalone XR hardware.