Abstract
3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) has become the leading approach for photorealistic novel view synthesis, yet its geometric accuracy lags behind its visual quality. Existing depth-guided methods attempt to resolve this by regularizing the optimization with monocular depth priors, typically using a single global scale-and-shift alignment. Crucially, we discover a fundamental flaw in this assumption: modern monocular depth networks systematically exhibit region-dependent, piecewise-linear distortions. This discovery invalidates standard global alignment strategies, which warp scene geometry by enforcing a single transform. To address this, we introduce a spatially varying affine rectification model that corrects monocular disparity into consistent metric depth using regionally smooth, edge-aware fields. We further derive a normal-aware regularizer that uses spatial gradients to couple the rectified disparity with 3DGS depth and normals. Across diverse experimental settings, our sensor-free method shows strong photometric quality of Gaussian Splatting while substantially improving geometric accuracy and outperforming state-of-the art geometry-focused methods.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.07709
