[jtolmar]

I don't really think this is true. Gaussian splats certainly came from a context where an opaque representation is expected and normal, but they ended up being an entirely comprehensible format. They're not as simple to operate on as an SDF or voxel representation, but I think they're on par with triangle mesh geometry. A transformed fuzzy sphere is about as complex as a triangle, and spherical harmonic colors, while more conceptually difficult than textures, have fewer moving parts.