I noticed that there is a Level of Detail component in beta in RealityKit, along with the new GaussianSplatResource component. Apple Maps 3D clearly uses some combination of these things, in addition to some form of streaming and compression most likely, in order to make performance acceptable. It would be nice if Apple could give us some examples of combining file compression + LevelofDetail + GaussianSplatResource in an example project. This is what will be required to make any kind of immersive 3D walkthroughs possible with these frameworks. I just randomly stumbled upon the LevelOfDetail component bc it was mentioned in a Google AI response, but otherwise there seem to be no examples that use it with respect to GaussianSplatResource (and so it’s not clear if it’s meant to be used in this way)

While loading PLY and USDZ is nice, it would be great to support more compressed formats like SPZ and SOG: https://www.nianticspatial.com/en/blog/spz4 Is this something that might be in the works? Or if Apple releases their own compression, that could work also. PLY tends to be quite large for models of any size.

Now that there are 3D buildings in Apple Maps, will there be any ability to add an elevation property to markers so that we can annotate a specific floor of a building, for example?

The new Apple Maps 3D experience in iOS 27 beta has very cool 3D Gaussian Splat maps of a number of cities now. I would like to be able to include these views inside my native app using MKMapItem. Is there a way to enable this 3D view inside of these map views at the moment? Thanks!