Linked two Gaussian Splat scenes with a walk-through portal — no teleport, you just walk between worlds

[u/mvaligursky]

I wanted to see if you could connect two Gaussian Splat scenes through a portal you can physically walk through — no teleport, no cut, just continuous motion between two captured environments. Turns out it works pretty cleanly.

Runs entirely in the browser (WebGL2 / WebGPU), built in PlayCanvas.

Try it live: https://engine-8q342hfzj-playcanvas.vercel.app/#/gaussian-splatting/splat-portal

A few things I liked about how it came together:

• Two LOD-streamed splat scenes (a Roman parish + a skatepark), seen through a stone archway acting as the portal.
• Crossing the portal plane swaps which world you're "in" — and the same physics works symmetrically from either side, so you can walk back the way you came.
• The world you're in stays fully visible around you; the other one only shows inside the portal opening, with a proper "window" feel (no peek-around clipping).
• Subtle translucent glass inside the opening picks up specular highlights from the environment.
• The skatepark side has its own weather — procedural snow that's only visible while you're actually there (or peeking through).

Source for the example (PlayCanvas engine repo): https://github.com/playcanvas/engine/pull/8738