So far I have only seen gaussian splatting used on photographic data. Would it make sens to use it for other graphics data, too. Or in other words, does it have potential to be used in games?
Depends, radiance field approaches (like gaussian splatting) are basically 3D photos. They do only capture color at geometry (position and direction), but have no concept of surfaces, materials and light transport in general (emission, absorption, transmission, reflection, scattering, etc.). In other words, they can only do static scenes (no animations) with pre-baked lighting.
The industry seems to be trying to move away from this with things like PBR (physical based rendering) and ray / path tracing which enables far better dynamic lighting.
Also, they are extremely space inefficient at the moment. A scene that would take a good traditional rendering engine a few dozen GB would take TB instead. Though, that might improve in the future with more optimization.
One exception to the above, where gaussian splatting might be interesting to see is procedural / generated content (possibly even animated). Especially for volumetric effects which currently use particle systems, like smoke, fire, clouds, flowing water, etc.
I thought I understood that the speculator highlights and view dependent color problems you mention are massively improved via adding spherical harmonics into each ellipse?
Sure, why not? It's just a fancy point cloud. I can easily imagine an open world Minecraft-esque game that uses this for its base engine instead of voxels.
The industry seems to be trying to move away from this with things like PBR (physical based rendering) and ray / path tracing which enables far better dynamic lighting.
Also, they are extremely space inefficient at the moment. A scene that would take a good traditional rendering engine a few dozen GB would take TB instead. Though, that might improve in the future with more optimization.
One exception to the above, where gaussian splatting might be interesting to see is procedural / generated content (possibly even animated). Especially for volumetric effects which currently use particle systems, like smoke, fire, clouds, flowing water, etc.