Can someone ELI5 what this does? I read the abstract and tried to find differences in the provided examples, but I don't understand (and don't see) what the "photorealistic" part is.

Imagine history documentaries where they take an old photo and free objects from the background and move them round giving the illusion of parallax movement. This software does that in less than a second, creating a 3D model that can be accurately moved (or the camera for that matter) in your video editor. It's not new, but this one is fast and "sharp".

Gaussian splashing is pretty awesome.

Takes a 2D image and allows you to simulate moving the angle of the camera with correct-ish parallax effect and proper subject isolation (seems to be able to handle multiple subjects in the same scene as well)

I guess this is what they use for the portrait mode effects.

It turns a single photo into a rough 3D scene so you can slightly move the camera and see new, realistic views. "Photorealistic" means it preserves real textures and lighting instead of a flat depth effect. Similar behavior can be seen with Apple's Spatial Scene feature in the Photos app: https://files.catbox.moe/93w7rw.mov

From a single picture it infers a hidden 3D representation, from which you can produce photorealistic images from slightly different vantage points (novel views).

Basically depth estimation to split the scene into various planes, and then inpainting to work out the areas in the obscured parts of the planes, and then the free movement of them to allow for parallax. Think of 2D side scrolling games that have various different background depths to give illusion of motion and depth.

Apple does something similar right now in their photos app, generating spatial views from 2d photos, where parallax is visible by moving your phone. This paper’s technique seems to produce them faster. They also use this same tech in their Vision Pro headset to generate unique views per eye, likewise on spatialized images from Photos.

It makes your picture 3D. The "photorealistic" part is "it's better than these other ways".

Black Mirror episode portraying what this could do: https://youtu.be/XJIq_Dy--VA?t=14. If Apple ran SHARP on this photo and compared it to the show, that would be incredible.

Or if you prefer Blade Runner: https://youtu.be/qHepKd38pr0?t=107

Agreed, this is a terrible presentation. The paper abstract is bordering on word salad, the demo images are meaningless and don’t show any clear difference to the previous SotA, the introduction talks about “nearby” views while the images appear to show zooming in, etc.