[sorenjan]

They're using their Depth Pro model for depth estimation, and that seems to do faces really well.

https://github.com/apple/ml-depth-pro

https://learnopencv.com/depth-pro-monocular-metric-depth/

[supermatt]

Im not sure how the depth estimation alone translates into the view synthesis, but the current implementation on-device is definitely not convincing for literally any portrait photographs I have seen.

True stereoscopic captures are convincing statically, but don't provide the parallax.

[sorenjan]

Good monocular depth estimation is crucial if you want to make a 3D representation from a single image. Ordinarily you have images from several camera poses and can create the gaussian splats using triangulation, with a single image you have to guess z position for them.