Development of an Immersive Digital Twin Environment Using Gaussian Splatting for Facility Visualization in Virtual Reality

Digital twin technologies provide new opportunities for visualizing, analyzing, and managing complex physical systems; however, effective methods are needed to transform digital twin data into immersive environments that support human interaction and decision-making. This study presents the development of a Digital Twin Immersive Environment (DTIE) prototype for facility visualization and analysis at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Engineering Research and Development Center (ERDC) in Vicksburg, Mississippi. A photogrammetry-based workflow was used to capture the facility interior and generate a dense three-dimensional point cloud, while a separate Gaussian splat reconstruction was generated from the same image dataset. The Gaussian splat representation was spatially aligned with Revit-derived CAD geometry to provide complementary geometric and photorealistic representations within the immersive environment. A virtual reality (VR) environment was developed with a user interface (UI) supporting ray-cast interaction, speech-to-text data entry, multi-user collaboration, switching between CAD and Gaussian splat representations, in-scene web browsing, and occupant movement simulation. The resulting DTIE prototype demonstrates the technical integration of complementary CAD and Gaussian splat representations with immersive interaction capabilities for facility digital twins. The environment operated at approximately 71.8 FPS under the reported Meta Quest 2 configuration. This work establishes a prototype framework for future investigation of collaborative visualization, scenario analysis, and decision-support applications for complex infrastructure systems.