Ecosystem

SimForgeOctober 2026

Physical AI is software that sees and acts in the physical world: self-driving cars, delivery robots, drones. Before it is trusted on a real street, it is trained and tested in simulation, where a rare moment can be replayed as often as needed.

That takes a pipeline of pieces, from the road network to closed-loop evaluation. The table below groups them by stage and names who makes each one.

Who makes what.

Each name opens its maker's page; hover for what it is and its licence.

Name SimForge page, previewed on hover SimForge integrates NVIDIA's tool

StageNVIDIASimForgeOthers
WorldThe place the car drives in.
Road networkThe HD map a car drives by: lanes, junctions and signals, usually as OpenDRIVE.Not offered
  • SimForge WorldsHD maps, OpenDRIVE and SUMOEach World's HD map: seven real places as OpenDRIVE and SUMO road networks, every lane, junction and signal.Non-commercial, free with sign-in; seven in the open release
  • RoadRunnerroad scene editorMathWorks' editor for 3D road scenes, with OpenDRIVE export.Commercial
  • AVES RealityOpenDRIVE of real roadsHD road maps of real places in ASAM OpenDRIVE, ready for simulation and validated for CARLA.Commercial
3D worldThe mesh or reconstructed scene the sensors see, built from survey, imagery or recorded drives.
  • NuReclogs to 3D scenesOmniverse NuRec turns recorded camera and LiDAR drives into neural 3D scenes that can be rendered from new viewpoints.NVIDIA terms, NGC container
  • Instant NuRecfeed-forward reconstructionReconstructs a short multi-camera clip in one pass, without training a model per scene.Apache-2.0 code, NVIDIA Open Model License weights
  • 3DGRUTGaussian renderingGaussian-splat reconstruction and rendering with real camera models, rolling shutter and secondary rays.Open source, Apache-2.0
  • OpenUSDscene formatOpen scene-description format, originally from Pixar, that Omniverse, NuRec and Isaac read and write.Open, Tomorrow Open Source Technology License
  • SimForge Worldsdigital twins, surveyed in 3DEach World's digital twin: the place rebuilt from survey and imagery, with signals, street lights and parking carried as data.Non-commercial, free with sign-in; seven in the open release
  • Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles3D city tilesPhotorealistic 3D mesh tiles of cities through the Google Maps Platform.Commercial API
  • AVES Realityroad digital twinsDigital twins of real roads for driving simulators, including CARLA.Commercial
  • Duality Falcondigital-twin simulatorUnreal-based digital-twin simulation for robotics, ground vehicles and industrial autonomy.Commercial
  • Applied Intuition Neural Simdrive data to 3D testsConverts drive data into 3D virtual test environments for end-to-end evaluation.Commercial
  • Waabi UniSimneural sensor simulatorA neural closed-loop sensor simulator, published as research by Waabi in 2023.Closed, in-house
Actors and assetsThe cars, people, robots and props placed in the world.
  • Asset Harvesteractors from logsTurns objects seen in drive logs into reusable 3D assets to insert into reconstructed scenes.Open source, Apache-2.0
  • Actor catalogue164 actors and props164 catalogued actors and props, from sedans and buses to pedestrians, sidewalk robots, drones and animals.Comes with Helios, PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0
  • Integrates Asset Harvesteractors from logsIntegrated: 3D actors that NVIDIA's Asset Harvester extracts from drive logs, alongside SimForge's own catalogue.Open source, Apache-2.0
  • Duality Falconsimulation-ready catalogueAn Unreal-based editor with a large catalogue of simulation-ready systems, items and spaces.Commercial
ScenariosWhat happens on the road, and the drives it comes from.
Scenario generationWho does what, where and when: authored by hand or rebuilt from a recorded drive.Not offered
  • Recastreal drives as scenariosTurns a recorded drive into an editable scenario, places it on the twins and checks it with automatic gates.SimForge Cloud
  • Scenario authoringwith the CLICreate a scenario on an installed map and change it with typed authoring operations, each checked against the map.Free
  • OpenSCENARIO exportASAM OpenSCENARIO XMLScenarios export as ASAM OpenSCENARIO XML 1.4.0, each actor's simulated motion as a timed trajectory.Free
  • Parallel Domain PD Replicalogs to replicasRebuilds drive logs as replicas for re-simulation, with actor insertion.Commercial
  • Foretellix Foretifycoverage-driven scenariosGenerates scenarios toward coverage goals and measures safety KPIs; integrates NVIDIA Omniverse and Cosmos.Commercial
Traffic and agentsThe other road users, and how they react to the car under test.
  • CAT-Kclosed-loop traffic modelClosed-loop fine-tuning of tokenized traffic models (CVPR 2025); AlpaSim's traffic service runs on it.NVIDIA Source Code License, non-commercial
  • Reactive trafficin the SimForge runtimeSimulated traffic avoids, yields and obeys signals instead of replaying a fixed path, so a hard brake or a late merge has consequences.Closed binary, PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0
  • Integrates CAT-Ktraffic agent modelIntegrated: SimForge's traffic agents can run NVIDIA's CAT-K model directly in the SimForge runtime.NVIDIA Source Code License, non-commercial
  • Inverted AIgenerated trafficTraffic agents and scenarios for driving simulators.Commercial
DatasetsRecorded drives and scenarios to train and test on.
  • PhysicalAI-AVfleet sensor data1,727 hours of multi-camera and LiDAR driving from 25 countries, in 310,895 clips of 20 seconds.Gated, NVIDIA AV dataset licence
  • SIMLOG-25k24,483 scenarios, and growingDriving scenarios on 7 SimForge Worlds: positions only, with OpenSCENARIO files and parquet ground truth.CC BY-NC 4.0, in the open release
  • Waymo Open Datasetperception, motion, end-to-endWaymo's public driving data for perception, motion and end-to-end research, with open leaderboards.Non-commercial, Waymo dataset licence
  • nuScenesBoston and Singapore1,000 driving scenes of 20 seconds from Boston and Singapore, with six cameras, LiDAR and radar.Non-commercial, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
SimulatorRuns the scene and shows what the car's sensors see.
SimulationMoves everything step by step: motion, physics and collisions, with the policy in the loop.
  • Isaac Simrobotics simulatorRobotics simulator on Omniverse: physics, sensors and synthetic data from OpenUSD scenes.Apache-2.0 source; Kit and assets under NVIDIA terms
  • SimForge runtimedeterministic simulatorThe simulator our cloud runs, on your machine: reactive traffic, and the same seed and actions give the same run.Closed binary, PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0
  • CARLAopen-source simulatorOpen-source driving simulator on Unreal Engine with OpenDRIVE maps and ROS 2; version 0.9.16 integrates NuRec and Cosmos Transfer.Open source
  • Parallel Domain PD Simdriving simulationDriving simulation with physics, HD maps and agent insertion.Commercial
  • Waabi WorldWaabi's simulatorThe simulator Waabi uses to build digital twins, create scenarios and train the Waabi Driver closed loop.Closed, in-house
Sensor renderingWhat the car's cameras, LiDAR and radar see at each step.
  • Omniverse ovrtxRTX sensor SDKOmniverse RTX sensor simulation as a library: renders camera, LiDAR and radar from OpenUSD scenes. Public pre-release.Proprietary, free download
  • NuRec renderingviews of reconstructed scenesRenders camera images and LiDAR point clouds of a NuRec scene from new poses, through a gRPC service.NVIDIA terms, NGC container
  • Helios Enginemulti-sensor rendererRenders cameras, LiDAR and radar from the same scene on one clock; repeat renders on the same GPU are byte-identical.Closed binary, PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0
  • CARLAUnreal sensorsCamera, LiDAR and radar sensors rendered in Unreal Engine.Open source
  • Parallel Domain PD Simmulti-sensor simulationCamera, LiDAR and radar simulation of the scene around the vehicle.Commercial
  • Duality Falcontuned virtual sensorsVirtual sensors tuned to match observed data, inside Duality's digital-twin simulation.Commercial
World modelsLearned models that generate or predict video of the world, used for variety and realism.
  • Cosmos 3unified world modelNVIDIA's current world-model platform: reasons about video and generates future video, sound and actions.Open model, OpenMDW-1.1
  • Cosmos Predict, Transfer and Reasonearlier model familiesPredict generates future video, Transfer restyles simulator or real video from controls such as depth and HD maps, and Reason describes video. NVIDIA now points to Cosmos 3.Apache-2.0 code, NVIDIA Open Model License weights
  • Cosmos-Drive-Dreamsgenerated driving videoGenerates driving video from HD-map and LiDAR controls, with a released set of synthetic clips.Open source; model and data terms vary
  • Integrates Cosmos Transferoptional pass on rendersIntegrated: an optional Cosmos Transfer pass restyles a finished Helios render, run as a separate job. The model is NVIDIA's.Apache-2.0 code, NVIDIA Open Model License weights
  • Wayve GAIAgenerative world modelsWayve's world models for driving, used to generate scenarios and evaluate its driver.Closed, in-house
  • Waymo World Modelgenerative simulationWaymo's generative model for simulation, controlled by language, layout and actions, with camera and LiDAR output.Closed, in-house
  • Helm.ai WorldGen-1generative sensor dataHelm.ai's generative model for multi-sensor driving simulation.Commercial
Evaluation and trainingHow a driving policy is tested and improved.
Closed-loop evaluationThe policy drives and the world reacts, so a mistake has consequences. Replaying a log cannot do that.
  • AlpaSimclosed-loop simulatorOpen-source closed-loop simulator for driving policies; replays neural reconstructions of real drives, built as microservices.Open source, Apache-2.0
  • SimForge runtime + Heliossensors rendered every stepA policy drives, the world reacts, and the cameras, LiDAR and radar it sees are rendered on the fly, deterministically, from a scenario you can read and edit.Closed binaries, PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0
  • Foretellix Foretifycoverage-driven testingGenerates scenarios toward coverage goals and measures safety KPIs; integrates NVIDIA Omniverse and Cosmos.Commercial
  • Bifrost Manifoldpolicy evaluationEvaluates policies across simulators and benchmarks, with sharded GPU runs and failure clustering.Commercial
RL trainingTrain a driving policy by trial and reward inside a simulator.
  • AlpaGymclosed-loop post-trainingReinforcement-learning post-training of driving models on AlpaSim rollouts, from one GPU to many nodes.Announced as open source
  • Alpamayoreasoning driving modelsDriving models that take multi-camera video and output trajectories with their reasoning: Alpamayo 1, 1.5 and 2 Super.Open weights, per-model terms
  • Isaac Labrobot learningRobot-learning and RL framework built on Isaac Sim.Open source, BSD-3-Clause
  • SimForge GymGymnasium environmentA Gymnasium environment over the SimForge runtime: deterministic seeds, reactive traffic and a PPO baseline on one CPU.Apache-2.0 client; runtime PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0
  • Wayve Ghost Gymneural simulatorWayve's closed-loop neural simulator for training and testing driving policies, described in 2023.Closed, in-house
PlatformsAll-in-one products that tie the stages together.
PlatformsOne product that ties several of the stages above together.
  • OmniverseOpenUSD platformNVIDIA's platform for OpenUSD worlds: RTX rendering, physics, sensors, authoring and streaming.Proprietary, NVIDIA terms
  • NVIDIA AV simulationreference workflowNVIDIA's reference workflow for AV simulation, composing NuRec, Cosmos, CARLA or AlpaSim, and RTX sensors.Each piece under its own terms
  • Studioin the browserWhere scenarios are authored, rendered in Helios and evaluated; renders and evaluations run on SimForge Cloud.Free to explore
  • simforge CLIon your machineOne command line for your machine; add --cloud to run the same job on SimForge's GPUs with SimForge Cloud.Open source, Apache-2.0
  • Applied Intuitionvehicle software platformPlatform spanning simulation, real-world data, neural reconstruction, world models and agent tooling.Commercial
  • WeRide GENESISsimulation modelWeRide's simulation model with AI scenarios, agents, metrics and diagnosis, announced in January 2026.Closed, in-house

How SimForge fits.

NVIDIA is complementary, not a competitor. Cosmos, NuRec, Alpamayo and AlpaSim are models and evaluators. They sit on top of the same foundations: maps of real places, scenarios, and a simulator that runs them the same way every time.

What SimForge supplies. Real places as SimForge Worlds (HD maps and digital twins), a catalogue of actors, scenarios authored or rebuilt from recorded drives, reactive traffic, a deterministic simulator, camera, LiDAR and radar rendering on one clock, and SimForge Gym, an RL environment over the same runtime.

Others. Applied Intuition, Parallel Domain, Foretellix and others build tools that overlap with these layers, and many teams combine several. Each line in the table is that company's own description of its product.

Product names are trademarks of their owners. SimForge is not affiliated with or endorsed by NVIDIA. Descriptions are based on public sources as of October 2026.