Role
SOG targets fast web preview—not a sole archival format or lossless review master.
Pros and cons
Pros: smaller payloads and faster IO. Cons: lossy detail loss and non-reversible recovery to full PLY quality—keep lossless masters.
Toolchain hooks
Freeze a master before SOG conversion; validate lighting/opacity in target viewers; compare SOG vs SPZ/splat via splat-transform and the SPZ reference impl.