Web Engine

PlayCanvas Engine

PlayCanvas Engine is an open-source WebGL/WebGPU engine with first-class Gaussian Splatting support through GSplat assets and components.

Stage: Rendering / Web AppsInteractive web scenesSOG deliveryGame-like splat experiences

Open official linkPlayCanvas Website->

What It Does

PlayCanvas Engine is worth listing separately from SuperSplat because it is the runtime layer. SuperSplat is where many users edit and publish; PlayCanvas is where developers build interactive web applications around splats.

It is a good fit when you need a splat to live inside a full app: hotspots, UI, collision approximations, animated meshes, product configurators, games, or custom navigation.

How To Use It In 3DGS

Prepare a delivery asset, preferably SOG for web download size, or PLY during early testing.
Load the asset as a PlayCanvas GSplat asset and assign it to a GSplat component or React GSplat component.
Add camera controls, UI, annotations, meshes, and any depth or collision proxy needed for interaction.
Test sorting artifacts, mobile memory, streaming behavior, and load time on target devices.

Things To Watch

Gaussian Splats are primarily visual assets; collision, navigation, shadows, and depth effects need separate handling or approximations.
Multiple splat components can introduce sorting artifacts unless the scene uses the appropriate rendering mode and asset structure.
SOG is lossy by design, so compare against source PLY before blaming the engine for compression artifacts.

Official And Related Links

PlayCanvas Website GSplat Component PlayCanvas React GSplat SOG Format Specification

Why Developers Use It

The GSplat component makes a splat part of the scene graph rather than a separate iframe-like viewer.
PlayCanvas documentation covers advanced topics such as draw order, custom shaders, and GPU-based splat processing.
Recent public demos show splats being used for game-like browser scenes, with separate proxy geometry for collision and navigation.

GSplat Component Docs GSplat Engine API Splat Processing Docs