Virtual Museum of Geology is a high-fidelity, first-person virtual tour of the “Grigore Cobălcescu” Museum of Geology at the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iaşi, Romania. Developed in the Unity engine, it uses a complete 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) scene to create an immersive and realistic digital twin of the museum space.
This project was developed as part of the scientific article:
Apopei, A. I. (2025). 3D Gaussian Splatting in Geosciences: A Novel High-Fidelity Approach for Digitizing Geoheritage from Minerals to Immersive Virtual Tours. Geosciences, XX(X), XXX. [Link to paper will be added upon publication]
Click the image above to watch a 1-minute demonstration of the virtual tour.
- To create a high-fidelity, true-to-life digital twin of a significant geoheritage site.
- To showcase the power of 3D Gaussian Splatting for creating large-scale, instantaneously loading virtual environments.
- To provide an accessible, immersive, and educational tool for virtual geotourism and geoeducation.
- To serve as a practical case study for the application of advanced 3D technologies in geosciences.
- Go to the Releases Page of this repository.
- Under the latest release, download the
.zipfile from the "Assets" section. - Unzip the folder, and run the
Virtual Museum of Geology.exefile.
This entire project is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). You can find the full license text in the LICENSE file.
If you use this project or its assets in your own research, please cite our paper:
Apopei, A. I. (2025). 3D Gaussian Splatting in Geosciences: A Novel High-Fidelity Approach for Digitizing Geoheritage from Minerals to Immersive Virtual Tours. Geosciences, XX(X), XXX. [Link to paper will be added upon publication]