Supported Features

Supported Features#

PhysX is the broadest backend in Isaac Lab. It is the reference for behaviour parity and supports every public asset, sensor, and renderer surface in the framework. Tasks built before Isaac Lab 3.0 ran on PhysX, and the bulk of the shipped tasks still default to the PhysX preset.

The summary below is intentionally coarse; consult each component’s API documentation for fine-grained capability details.

Core Simulation#

  • Articulation API (multi-link articulations, fixed-base and floating-base articulations, single-body articulations modeled as rigid bodies)

  • Rigid Object and Rigid Object Collection APIs

  • Soft-body and particle simulation (legacy — not exposed through the Isaac Lab asset surface but available through PhysX schemas)

  • CPU and GPU pipelines; GPU is the default for the vectorized RL workloads

Sensors#

PhysX implements the following sensors directly under isaaclab_physx/sensors/:

  • Contact Sensor

  • IMU

  • Frame Transformer

  • Joint Wrench Sensor

  • PVA

The following sensors are backend-agnostic (implemented in isaaclab core) and work transparently with PhysX:

  • Ray Caster

  • Camera — see Camera

Rendering#

  • RTX renderer (real-time rasterized; path tracing available through the underlying Omniverse RTX pipeline)

  • Tiled rendering for vectorized RGB / depth / segmentation

Tasks and Workflows#

  • Direct and Manager-based workflows

  • All isaaclab_tasks environments default to the PhysX preset unless the task explicitly opts in to a different backend

  • Imitation learning and motion-generation pipelines (Mimic, motion generators)

Known Caveats#

  • PhysX requires Isaac Sim and Omniverse Kit to be installed.

  • GPU buffer sizes are static and must be tuned per task — see PhysX Configuration.

  • enable_stabilization can corrupt contact-force readings reported through the contact sensor; disable it if you rely on the contact sensor for force-magnitude observations.

  • The PhysX TGS solver behaviour can differ from Newton’s MJWarp solver on stiff contact stacks; if you are porting a task to Newton, expect to retune contact-handling parameters.