Could you or someone else wise in the ways of graphics give me a layperson's rundown of how this works, why it's considered so important, and what the technical challenges are given that an RGB+D(epth?) stream is the input?
Usually creating a Gaussian splat representation takes a long time and uses an iterative gradient-based optimization procedure. Using RGBD helps me sidestep this optimization, as much of the geometry is already present in the depth channel and so it enables the real-time aspect of my technique.
When you say "big deal", I imagine you are also asking about business or societal implications. I can't really speak on those, but I'm open to licensing this IP to any companies which know about big business applications :)
I'm not aware of other live RGBD visualizations except for direct pointcloud rendering. Compared to pointclouds, splats are better able to render textures, view-dependent effects, and occlusions.
So yes, it's very much like the RGB-D visualizations from 10 years ago, just with splats instead of points.
I'll concede that ten years ago, someone could have done this. But no one did, as far as I know.
By "big deal," I meant more for people specializing around computer graphics, computer vision, or even narrower subfields of either of those two -- a big deal from an academic interest perspective.
Sure, this might also have implications in society and business, but I'm a nerd, and I appreciate a good nerding out over something cool, niche, and technically impressive.