Nobody puts Gaussian splats in tenders yet – Arek Szadkowski, Esri | 3DISE @ INTERGEO #3

Arek Szadkowski is Global Lead for ArcGIS Reality at Esri. He works with Esri's distributors around the world on how to sell reality mapping, and he says he pushed Esri's R&D team toward Gaussian splats two or three years ago, when they were still research papers. Esri shipped splats in ArcGIS Reality last year. We talk about splats as one more layer from the same alignment as meshes, DSMs and point clouds, why Esri now also imports splats from other vendors, and who actually pays for them. Per Arek, early adopters still deliver splats as an add-on extra, and he has seen almost no mainstream tenders that specify them. Then AI and semantic search in splats, which he expects to change how mapping is done within two to three years, Esri's take on digital twins, and Ground Splats from high-end 360 mobile mapping cameras. Open question: when will public tenders start asking for splats? Recorded live at INTERGEO 2026 in the 3DISE podcast studio. Moderators are co-founders of 3DISE conference: Michal Gula Tomas Barnas 📄 Full transcript, key ideas and quotes: https://www.2diamr.com/watch/gaussian... Chapters: 0:00 What Arek Szadkowski does at Esri 2:00 Revenue goals, not followers 3:00 Why Gaussian splats were a no-brainer 5:13 Why GIS users want reality capture 7:10 AI and semantic search in splats 8:24 Splats inside ArcGIS Reality 9:54 Importing splats from other vendors 10:28 Who actually pays for Gaussian splats? 12:23 Railways, power lines and manholes 13:43 As-is versus as-designed 15:31 What works in his LinkedIn videos 17:37 Digital twins and 'mirror worlds' 20:08 Ground Splats from 360 cameras 21:48 The closed-system misconception 23:21 Wrap-up