Gaussian splats are definitely interesting and do something things older tech is not very good at, but at the same time, it's definitely going to end up being a tool in the tool chest and not completely murderating mesh-based tech or something because they have a lot of other weaknesses, like editability. Or dynamic animation.
What I think some people may not realize is, that's not particularly uncommon. There's a really, really long line of graphical techs that do something particularly well but their weaknesses have kept them in a limited use. It's not a problem for Gaussian splats to become a tool in the toolchest; they aren't a "failure" if we're still using meshes for a lot of things in 10 years.
Mesh-type techs are the "default" for some good reasons.
Mesh processing is a very difficult research domain in computer graphics that has been iterated for several decades, and we still don't have a good automated solution for retopology (Partly because the problem is hard to define in a mathematical way, but also since it's not a problem you can just solve with AI by throwing data and compute at it)
It's a novel approach and worked well in BIM a few years ago, though not anything real-time.
1. extract even a super approximate (meaning, like square edges, with some visual details) mesh from gen ai or a scan as a starting point,
2. move things around and define volumes for gameplay needs,
3. name things ("this is a Victorian house in a surprisingly good condition compared to the neighborhood it's in"), have human guided gen ai polish the things a bit more from the labels within the bounds of the gameplay required volumes,
4. let run time dlss fix the lighting etc from the rough geometry