Supported Features

Supported Features#

PhysX is the broadest backend in Isaac Lab. It is the reference for behaviour parity and supports most public asset, sensor, and renderer surfaces in the framework. Tasks built before Isaac Lab 3.0 ran on PhysX. Environments whose previous default was automatic PhysX selection now use the concrete isaacsim_physx preset by default; explicit backend defaults remain unchanged.

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)

  • Deformable Object API. Cable Object is not supported.

  • 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

  • isaaclab_tasks environments that previously defaulted to automatic PhysX selection now default to concrete Isaac Sim PhysX. Environments with an explicit backend default, including Newton tasks, retain that default.

  • 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 make contact-force magnitudes reported through the contact sensor inaccurate; disable it if you rely on the contact sensor for force 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.