simulation/modules/IsaacLab/docs/source/migration/comparing_simulation_isaacgym.rst

.. _migrating-from-isaacgymenvs-comparing-simulation:

Comparing Simulations Between Isaac Gym and Isaac Lab
=====================================================


When migrating simulations from Isaac Gym to Isaac Lab, it is sometimes helpful to compare
the simulation configurations in Isaac Gym and Isaac Lab to identify differences between the two setups.
There may be differences in how default values are interpreted, how the importer treats certain
hierarchies of bodies, and how values are scaled. The only way to be certain that two simulations
are equivalent in the eyes of PhysX is to record a simulation trace of both setups and compare
them by inspecting them side-by-side. This approach works because PhysX is the same underlying
engine for both Isaac Gym and Isaac Lab, albeit with different versions.


Recording to PXD2 in Isaac Gym Preview Release
----------------------------------------------

Simulation traces in Isaac Gym can be recorded using the built-in PhysX Visual Debugger (PVD)
file output feature. Set the operating system environment variable ``GYM_PVD_FILE`` to the
desired output file path; the ``.pxd2`` file extension will be appended automatically.

For detailed instructions, refer to the tuning documentation included with Isaac Gym:

.. code-block:: text

    isaacgym/docs/_sources/programming/tuning.rst.txt

.. note::

    This file reference is provided because Isaac Gym does not have its documentation available online.


Recording to OVD in Isaac Lab
-----------------------------

To record an OVD simulation trace file in Isaac Lab, you must set the appropriate Isaac Sim Kit
arguments. It is important that the ``omniPvdOvdRecordingDirectory`` variable is set **before**
``omniPvdOutputEnabled`` is set to ``true``.

.. code-block:: bash

    ./isaaclab.sh -p scripts/benchmarks/benchmark_non_rl.py --task <task_name> \
        --kit_args="--/persistent/physics/omniPvdOvdRecordingDirectory=/tmp/myovds/ \
        --/physics/omniPvdOutputEnabled=true"

This example outputs a series of OVD files to the ``/tmp/myovds/`` directory.

If the ``--kit_args`` argument does not work in your particular setup, you can set the Kit arguments
manually by editing the following file directly within the Isaac Sim source code:

.. code-block:: text

    source/extensions/isaacsim.simulation_app/isaacsim/simulation_app/simulation_app.py

Append the following lines after the ``args = []`` block:

.. code-block:: python

    args.append("--/persistent/physics/omniPvdOvdRecordingDirectory=/path/to/output/ovds/")
    args.append("--/physics/omniPvdOutputEnabled=true")


Inspecting PXD2 and OVD Files
-----------------------------

By opening the PXD2 file in a PVD viewer and the OVD file in OmniPVD (a Kit extension), you can
manually compare the two simulation runs and their respective parameters.

**PhysX Visual Debugger (PVD) for PXD2 Files**

Download the PVD viewer from the NVIDIA Developer Tools page:

    `<https://developer.nvidia.com/tools-downloads#?search=PVD>`_

Both version 2 and version 3 of the PVD viewer are compatible with PXD2 files.

**OmniPVD for OVD Files**

To view OVD files, enable the OmniPVD extension in the Isaac Sim application. For detailed
instructions, refer to the OmniPVD developer guide:

    https://docs.omniverse.nvidia.com/kit/docs/omni_physics/latest/extensions/ux/source/omni.physx.pvd/docs/dev_guide/physx_visual_debugger.html

**Inspecting Contact Gizmos in OmniPVD**

To inspect contact points between objects, enable the contact gizmos in OmniPVD. Ensure that the
simulation frame is set to **PRE** (pre-simulation frames of each simulation step) in the OmniPVD
timeline, or set the replay mode to **PRE**. This allows you to visualize contact information before
the solver processes each step.

**Comparing PVD and OVD Files**

Using the PVD viewer and the OmniPVD extension, you can now compare the simulations side-by-side
to identify configuration differences. On the left is PVD for PXD2 inspection and on the right is the OmniPVD
extension loaded to inspect OVD files.

.. image:: ../_static/migration/ovd_pvd_comparison.jpg


Parameters to Verify During Simulation Comparison
-------------------------------------------------

For PhysX articulations, each attribute is useful to inspect because it reveals how the link or shape
will actually behave in contact, under drives, and at constraints. Below, each attribute is expanded
with why it matters for debugging and tuning simulations.


PxArticulationLink
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Each link behaves like a rigid body with mass properties, damping, velocity limits, and contact-resolution
limits. Inspecting these helps explain stability issues, jitter, and odd responses to forces.

Mass Properties
"""""""""""""""

**Mass**
    Determines how strongly the link accelerates under forces and how it shares impulses in collisions
    and joint constraints.

    *When to inspect:* Understand why a link seems "too heavy" (barely moves when pushed) or "too light"
    (flies around from small impulses), and to detect inconsistent mass distribution across a chain that
    can cause unrealistic motion or joint stress.

**Center of Mass (pose)**
    Controls where forces effectively act and how the link balances.

    *When to inspect:* A character or mechanism tips over unexpectedly or feels unbalanced; an offset COM
    can cause unrealistic torque for the same contact.

**Inertia Tensor / Inertia Scale**
    Defines rotational resistance about each axis.

    *When to inspect:* Links are too easy or too hard to spin relative to their mass, which affects joint
    drive tuning and impact responses.

Damping Properties
""""""""""""""""""

**Linear Damping**
    Models velocity-proportional drag on translation; higher values make links lose linear speed faster.

    *When to inspect:* Links slide too far (damping too low) or feel "underwater" (damping too high), or
    when articulation energy seems to vanish without obvious contact.

**Angular Damping**
    Models drag on rotation; higher values make spinning links slow more quickly.

    *When to inspect:* Links keep spinning after impacts or motor drives (too low), or joints feel "sticky"
    and fail to swing freely under gravity (too high).

Velocity Properties
"""""""""""""""""""

**Linear Velocity**
    Instantaneous world-space translational velocity of the link.

    *When to inspect:* Verify whether joint motors, gravity, or contacts are generating expected motion,
    detect numerical explosions (huge spikes), and correlate with CCD thresholds and max linear velocity clamping.

**Angular Velocity**
    Instantaneous world-space rotational velocity.

    *When to inspect:* Verify joint drives, impacts, or constraints are producing the correct rotation;
    spot runaway spin that can cause instability or tunneling before clamping takes effect.

**Max Linear Velocity**
    Upper bound PhysX uses to clamp linear speed before solving, intended to prevent numerical issues
    from extremely fast motion.

    *When to inspect:* Objects start tunneling or simulations explode at high speeds. If too high, links
    can move too far in one step; too low, they may appear unnaturally capped like "speed-limited" robots.

**Max Angular Velocity**
    Upper bound for angular speed; PhysX clamps angular velocity similarly to linear velocity.

    *When to inspect:* Links spin unrealistically fast after collisions or drives (value too large), or
    rotation looks unnaturally limited, especially for wheels or rotors that should rotate quickly (value too small).

Contact Resolution Properties
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

**Max Depenetration Velocity**
    Limits how much corrective velocity the solver may add in one step to resolve penetrations at contacts.

    *When to inspect:* Overlapping links "explode" outward or jitter after starting interpenetrating (too high),
    or embedded links separate too slowly and appear stuck together (too low).

**Max Contact Impulse**
    Caps the impulse the solver can apply at contacts; per-body limit, with the actual contact limit being
    the minimum of the two bodies' values.

    *When to inspect:* Contacts feel too soft (bodies interpenetrate deeply or sink into the environment) or
    too rigid (sharp impulses causing ringing or bouncing), or when tuning "soft collisions" like rubber or
    skin-like surfaces.

State and Behavior Flags
""""""""""""""""""""""""

**Kinematic vs Dynamic flag / Disable gravity**
    Indicates whether a link is driven kinematically or fully simulated, and whether gravity affects it.

    *When to inspect:* Parts appear frozen, snap directly to poses, or ignore gravity, which can drastically
    change articulation behavior.

**Sleep thresholds (linear, angular) and wake counter**
    Control when a link is allowed to go to sleep and stop simulating.

    *When to inspect:* Articulations sleep too early (stopping motion) or never sleep (wasting performance
    and causing low-amplitude jitter).


PxArticulationJoint
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The inbound joint defines relative motion between a link and its parent. Inspecting motion and related
parameters explains limits, constraints, and how drives shape articulation pose and stability.

Joint Configuration
"""""""""""""""""""

**Motion**
    Per-axis setting (locked, limited, free) that defines which degrees of freedom the joint allows and
    whether ranges are restricted.

    *When to inspect:* A link moves in an unexpected direction (axis wrongly set to free), hits a hard stop
    sooner or later than expected (limit vs locked), or seems unconstrained because an axis is mistakenly left free.

**Joint Type / Axes definition**
    Choice of revolute, prismatic, spherical, etc., and the local joint frames that define axes.

    *When to inspect:* A "hinge" behaves more like a ball joint or slides unexpectedly; incorrect type or
    frame alignment easily produces weird motions.

**Limits (swing, twist, linear)**
    Specify allowed angular or linear ranges and often include stiffness/damping.

    *When to inspect:* Joints hyper-extend, clip through geometry, or suddenly snap at boundaries; mis-set
    limits cause popping and instability.

Drive Properties
""""""""""""""""

**Drive target position (orientation) and target velocity**
    Desired relative pose and relative velocity that drives the articulation, often using spring-damper models.

    *When to inspect:* Controllers are too slow or overshoot and oscillate—target values and drive parameters
    must match link mass and inertia.

**Drive stiffness and damping (spring strength, tangential damping)**
    Control how aggressively the joint tries to reach the target pose and how much overshoot is damped.

    *When to inspect:* Joints buzz or oscillate under load (stiffness high, damping low) or feel unresponsive
    and "rubbery" (stiffness low).

**Joint friction / resistance (if configured)**
    Adds resistance even without explicit damping in drives.

    *When to inspect:* Passive joints keep swinging too long, or appear stuck even without drives.


PxShape
^^^^^^^

Shapes attached to links determine collision representation and contact behavior. Even if they are internal
in OmniPhysics, their properties have a strong impact on stability, contact timing, and visual alignment.

Collision Offsets
"""""""""""""""""

**Rest Offset**
    Distance at which two shapes come to rest; sum of their rest offsets defines the separation where they "settle".

    *When to inspect:* Graphics and collision appear misaligned (gaps or visible intersections), or sliding
    over meshes is rough. Small positive offsets can smooth sliding, while zero offset tends to align exactly
    but may catch on geometry.

**Contact Offset**
    Distance at which contact generation begins; shapes whose distance is less than the sum of contact offsets
    generate contacts.

    *When to inspect:* Contacts appear "too early" (objects seem to collide before visually touching, increasing
    contact count) or "too late" (tunneling or jitter). The difference between contact and rest offsets is
    crucial for predictive, stable contacts.

Geometry and Materials
""""""""""""""""""""""

**Geometry type and dimensions**
    Box, sphere, capsule, convex, mesh, and the associated size parameters.

    *When to inspect:* Collision footprint does not match the visual mesh—overly large shapes cause premature
    contacts; small shapes allow visual intersection and change leverage at contacts.

**Material(s): friction, restitution, compliance**
    Friction coefficients and restitution define sliding and bounciness.

    *When to inspect:* An articulation foot skids too easily, sticks to the ground, or bounces unexpectedly.
    Wrong materials can make mechanisms unstable or unresponsive.

Shape Flags
"""""""""""

**Flag for simulation / query / trigger**
    Whether the shape participates in simulation contacts, raycasts only, or trigger events.

    *When to inspect:* Contacts do not appear (shape set as query only) or triggers unexpectedly create
    physical collisions.

**Contact density (CCD flags, if used)**
    Continuous collision detection flags affecting how fast-moving links are handled.

    *When to inspect:* Fast articulation parts tunnel through thin obstacles, or CCD is too aggressive and
    reduces performance.


PxRigidDynamic
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

``PxRigidDynamic`` is the core simulated rigid body type in PhysX, so inspecting its attributes is crucial
for understanding individual object behavior, stability, and performance in the scene. Many attributes
mirror ``PxArticulationLink``, but a rigid dynamic is not constrained by articulation joints and can also
be used in kinematic mode.

Mass and Mass-Related Properties
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

**Mass**
    Controls translational response to forces and impulses; for the same impulse, lower mass gives higher
    velocity change.

    *When to inspect:* An object barely reacts to hits (mass too large) or flies away from small forces
    (mass too small), or mass ratios between interacting bodies cause overly dominant or easily bullied bodies.

**Center of Mass (COM) pose**
    Defines where forces effectively act and around which point the body rotates.

    *When to inspect:* Objects tip over unexpectedly, roll in unintuitive ways, or feel "unbalanced." A COM
    too high or off-center can cause strong torques from small contacts.

**Inertia tensor / inertia scaling**
    Determines resistance to angular acceleration around each axis for a given torque.

    *When to inspect:* Bodies are too easy or too hard to spin (e.g., a large object spinning quickly from
    small hits), or when anisotropic behavior is needed (e.g., wheels that spin easily around one axis but
    resist others).

Damping and Velocity Limits
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""

**Linear Damping**
    Adds velocity-proportional drag on translation.

    *When to inspect:* Bodies slide too far or for too long (damping too low) or appear as if moving through
    thick fluid (damping too high), and when scenes lose energy faster than friction alone would suggest.

**Angular Damping**
    Adds drag on rotation, reducing angular velocity over time.

    *When to inspect:* Spinning objects never settle or spin unrealistically long (too low), or they stop
    rotating almost immediately after impact or motor impulses (too high).

**Linear Velocity**
    Current translational velocity used by the integrator and solver.

    *When to inspect:* Debug impulses, gravity, or applied forces to see whether the body is accelerating
    as expected; detect spikes or non-physical jumps in speed.

**Angular Velocity**
    Current rotational speed around each axis.

    *When to inspect:* Rotations look jittery, explode numerically, or fail to respond to applied torques.
    High values relative to time step and object scale can indicate instability.

**Max Linear Velocity**
    Upper bound used to clamp linear velocity before solving.

    *When to inspect:* Very fast bodies cause tunneling or simulation explosions (value too high), or they
    appear unnaturally "speed-limited," especially projectiles or debris in high-energy scenes (value too low).

**Max Angular Velocity**
    Upper bound used to clamp angular velocity.

    *When to inspect:* Thin or small bodies spin so fast they destabilize the scene (value too high), or
    spinning elements such as wheels, propellers, or debris appear artificially capped (value too low).

Contact Resolution and Impulses
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

**Max Depenetration Velocity**
    Limits the corrective velocity the solver may introduce in one step to resolve interpenetrations.

    *When to inspect:* Intersecting bodies "explode" apart or jitter violently after overlap (too high), or
    separate very slowly and appear stuck or interpenetrated for several frames (too low).

**Max Contact Impulse**
    Caps the impulse that can be applied at contacts involving this body; the effective limit is the minimum
    between the two bodies, or the dynamic body for static–dynamic contacts.

    *When to inspect:* Create softer contacts (lower limit) or very rigid, almost unyielding bodies (high or
    default limit); objects sink into each other or bounce unrealistically.

Sleep and Activation Behavior
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

**Sleep Threshold**
    Mass-normalized kinetic energy below which a body becomes a candidate for sleeping.

    *When to inspect:* Bodies fall asleep too early while they should still move (threshold too high) or
    constantly jitter and never sleep (threshold too low), which can hurt performance.

**Wake Counter / isSleeping flag**
    Internal timer and state indicating whether the body is active.

    *When to inspect:* Bodies refuse to wake up on interactions or wake too easily. Bad sleep behavior can
    make scenes feel "dead" or too noisy.

Kinematic Mode and Locking
""""""""""""""""""""""""""

**Kinematic Flag (PxRigidBodyFlag::eKINEMATIC)**
    When set, the body is moved by ``setKinematicTarget`` and ignores forces and gravity, while still
    affecting dynamic bodies it touches.

    *When to inspect:* Objects appear to have infinite mass (pushing others but not reacting) or ignore
    gravity and impulses. Mismatched expectations here commonly cause odd behavior in characters, moving
    platforms, or doors.

**Rigid Dynamic Lock Flags (PxRigidDynamicLockFlag)**
    Per-axis linear and angular DOF locks, effectively constraining motion without a joint.

    *When to inspect:* Bodies unexpectedly move in constrained directions (lock not set) or fail to
    move/rotate where they should (lock set by mistake), especially for 2D-style movement or simple
    constrained mechanisms.

**Disable Gravity (PxActorFlag::eDISABLE_GRAVITY)**
    Toggles whether the body is affected by scene gravity.

    *When to inspect:* Objects float in mid-air or drop unexpectedly. A common source of confusion in
    mixed setups with some gravity-less bodies.

Forces and Solver Overrides
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""

**Applied force and torque (accumulated per step)**
    Net forces/torques that will be integrated into velocity.

    *When to inspect:* Debug gameplay forces (thrusters, character pushes, explosions) to see if the expected
    input is actually reaching the body.

**Per-body solver iteration counts (minPositionIters, minVelocityIters)**
    Overrides for how many solver iterations this body gets in constraints and contacts.

    *When to inspect:* Certain bodies (e.g., characters, stacked crates, fragile structures) need higher
    stability or more accurate stacking. Low iterations can cause jitter and penetration; too high wastes
    performance.

Shape-Related Aspects
"""""""""""""""""""""

While not properties of ``PxRigidDynamic`` itself, the shapes attached to it heavily influence behavior.

**Attached Shapes' Rest and Contact Offsets**
    Control predictive contact generation and visual separation as described earlier.

    *When to inspect:* A dynamic body seems to collide too early/late or appears to float above surfaces
    or intersect them visually.

**Attached Materials (friction, restitution)**
    Define sliding and bounciness for this body's contacts.

    *When to inspect:* Rigid dynamics skid, stick, or bounce in unexpected ways. Often the "behavior issue"
    is material configuration rather than mass or damping.


Summary: What to Inspect and Why
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The table below summarizes the key inspection areas for each PhysX component:

.. list-table::
   :header-rows: 1
   :widths: 20 40 40

   * - Component
     - Key Attributes
     - Debugging Focus
   * - **Links**
     - Mass, damping, velocities, limits
     - Overall energy, stability, and response to joints/contacts
   * - **Joints**
     - Motion, limits, drives
     - How articulation pose evolves; over/under-constrained motion
   * - **Shapes**
     - Offsets, materials, geometry
     - Contact timing, friction behavior, visual vs physical alignment
   * - **Rigid Dynamics**
     - Mass, inertia, damping, velocity limits, sleep, kinematic flags
     - Acceleration, settling, extreme motion, body state

All of these attributes together provide a comprehensive picture of why an articulation or rigid body
behaves as it does and where to adjust parameters for stability, realism, or control performance.