The Big Picture: Volumetric media is transitioning from a specialized studio asset to a streamable digital commodity. This shift is not yet complete, but it has reached a critical compression threshold. As 4D Gaussian Splatting (4DGS) reduces the rendering burden on local hardware, the industry bottleneck is moving away from Display and toward the Transmission and Production layers.
The Encoding Inflection: Breaking the 100GB Barrier The distribution model for volumetric media is shifting from download-centric to stream-first architectures. Historically, the “flipbook” approach—storing each frame as a discrete asset—required 100 GB per minute, effectively prohibiting consumer-scale use.
Gracia CEO Georgii Vysotskii benchmarks the current inflection point at a 75 Mbps streamable format. This 100x compression leap points to a future where WebXR and WebGPU enable high-fidelity volumetric assets to be delivered directly through the browser, bypassing the friction of native app installation and local-compute dependency.
The Structural Cost Stack To evaluate the maturity of this format, the costs must be disaggregated into three distinct dimensions:
- Capture Cost: Current high-fidelity 360-degree capture requires 35 to 50 synchronized cameras. This “outside-in” architecture is an operational dead end for mass production. The industry is betting on diffusion-led reconstruction to reduce this requirement to 4–8 cameras, but the transition from brute-force capture to intelligent inference remains a work in progress.
- Encoding Cost: While compression has improved, the computational intensity of training 4DGS models remains high. The “commoditization” of this layer depends on the stability of file format standards, which are currently fragmented.
- Interaction Cost: 4DGS currently functions as a high-fidelity playback medium rather than a fully interactive one. The format lacks traditional rigging and physics affordances. Until volumetric capture merges with motion-capture (mocap) pipelines, these assets will remain “static experiences” rather than “playable agents.”
The Bottom Line: The competitive boundary in spatial computing is shifting from local rendering power to transmission efficiency. Heavy local-compute workflows may become economically inefficient as web-native pipelines mature. Organizations that master the compression of reality into streamable logic will control the new distribution layer. However, until capture costs collapse and interaction is unlocked, volumetric media will remain an infrastructure-readytechnology waiting for its production-scale moment.
