The field of 3D scene reconstruction and acoustic modeling is rapidly advancing with the development of new methods and techniques. One of the key trends is the use of differentiable rendering and light transport to enable efficient and accurate reconstruction of complex scenes. This includes the use of Gaussian surfels and spherical harmonics to model diffuse and specular materials, as well as the incorporation of physically-based rendering to capture global illumination effects. Another area of focus is the reconstruction of scenes with reflective surfaces, such as mirrors, where new methods are being developed to utilize mirror reflections as complementary viewpoints to enhance reconstruction quality. Additionally, there is a growing interest in the use of time-of-flight sensors and acoustic modeling to detect and localize objects in 3D space. Notable papers in this area include: Differentiable Acoustic Radiance Transfer, which introduces a differentiable implementation of acoustic radiance transfer for efficient optimization of material properties. Differentiable Light Transport with Gaussian Surfels via Adapted Radiosity, which proposes an efficient framework for differentiable light transport using Gaussian surfels and spherical harmonics. Seeing Through Reflections: Advancing 3D Scene Reconstruction in Mirror-Containing Environments with Gaussian Splatting, which presents a comprehensive dataset and a method for utilizing mirror reflections to enhance reconstruction quality.