Editor’s note: This blog is a part of Into the Omniverse, a series focused on how developers, 3D practitioners and enterprises can transform their workflows using the latest advances in OpenUSD and NVIDIA Omniverse. Simulated driving environments enable engineers to safely and efficiently train, test and validate autonomous vehiclesacross countless real-world and edge-case scenarios without the risks and costs of physical testing. These simulated environments can be created through neural reconstruction of real-world data from AV fleets or generated with world foundation models— neural networks that understand physics and real-world properties. WFMs can be used to generate synthetic datasets for enhanced AV simulation. To help physical AI developers build such simulated environments, NVIDIA unveiled major advances in WFMs at the GTC Paris and CVPR conferences earlier this month. These new capabilities enhance NVIDIA Cosmos — a platform of generative WFMs, advanced tokenizers, guardrails and accelerated data processing tools. Key innovations like Cosmos Predict-2, the Cosmos Transfer-1 NVIDIA preview NIM microservice and Cosmos Reason are improving how AV developers generate synthetic data, build realistic simulated environments and validate safety systems at unprecedented scale. Universal Scene Description, a unified data framework and standard for physical AI applications, enables seamless integration and interoperability of simulation assets across the development pipeline. OpenUSD standardization plays a critical role in ensuring 3D pipelines are built to scale. NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform of application programming interfaces, software development kits and services for building OpenUSD-based physical AI applications, enables simulations from WFMs and neural reconstruction at world scale. Leading AV organizations — including Foretellix, Mcity, Oxa, Parallel Domain, Plus AI and Uber — are among the first to adopt Cosmos models. Foundations for Scalable, Realistic Simulation Cosmos Predict-2, NVIDIA’s latest WFM, generates high-quality synthetic data by predicting future world states from multimodal inputs like text, images and video. This capability is critical for creating temporally consistent, realistic scenarios that accelerate training and validation of AVs and robots. In addition, Cosmos Transfer, a control model that adds variations in weather, lighting and terrain to existing scenarios, will soon be available to 150,000 developers on CARLA, a leading open-source AV simulator. This greatly expands the broad AV developer community’s access to advanced AI-powered simulation tools. Developers can start integrating synthetic data into their own pipelines using the NVIDIA Physical AI Dataset. The latest release includes 40,000 clips generated using Cosmos. Building on these foundations, the Omniverse Blueprint for AV simulation provides a standardized, API-driven workflow for constructing rich digital twins, replaying real-world sensor data and generating new ground-truth data for closed-loop testing. The blueprint taps into OpenUSD’s layer-stacking and composition arcs, which enable developers to collaborate asynchronously and modify scenes nondestructively. This helps create modular, reusable scenario variants to efficiently generate different weather conditions, traffic patterns and edge cases. Driving the Future of AV Safety To bolster the operational safety of AV systems, NVIDIA earlier this year introduced NVIDIA Halos — a comprehensive safety platform that integrates the company’s full automotive hardware and software stack with AI research focused on AV safety. The new Cosmos models — Cosmos Predict- 2, Cosmos Transfer- 1 NIM and Cosmos Reason — deliver further safety enhancements to the Halos platform, enabling developers to create diverse, controllable and realistic scenarios for training and validating AV systems. These models, trained on massive multimodal datasets including driving data, amplify the breadth and depth of simulation, allowing for robust scenario coverage — including rare and safety-critical events — while supporting post-training customization for specialized AV tasks. At CVPR, NVIDIA was recognized as an Autonomous Grand Challenge winner, highlighting its leadership in advancing end-to-end AV workflows. The challenge used OpenUSD’s robust metadata and interoperability to simulate sensor inputs and vehicle trajectories in semi-reactive environments, achieving state-of-the-art results in safety and compliance. Learn more about how developers are leveraging tools like CARLA, Cosmos, and Omniverse to advance AV simulation in this livestream replay: Hear NVIDIA Director of Autonomous Vehicle Research Marco Pavone on the NVIDIA AI Podcast share how digital twins and high-fidelity simulation are improving vehicle testing, accelerating development and reducing real-world risks. Get Plugged Into the World of OpenUSD Learn more about what’s next for AV simulation with OpenUSD by watching the replay of NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s GTC Paris keynote. Looking for more live opportunities to learn more about OpenUSD? Don’t miss sessions and labs happening at SIGGRAPH 2025, August 10–14. Discover why developers and 3D practitioners are using OpenUSD and learn how to optimize 3D workflows with the self-paced “Learn OpenUSD” curriculum for 3D developers and practitioners, available for free through the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute. Explore the Alliance for OpenUSD forum and the AOUSD website. Stay up to date by subscribing to NVIDIA Omniverse news, joining the community and following NVIDIA Omniverse on Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium and X. #into #omniverse #world #foundation #models

In the quiet moments when the world feels too heavy, I find myself reflecting on the art of change. It’s strange how something as simple as a logo can embody so much about us. Just like Walmart, Burger King, and Uber have rebranded, shedding the old skin to embrace new beginnings, I often wonder if I too should change. But what happens when you feel too lost to even begin? Every time I look at the faded memories of my past, I am reminded of the colors that once defined me. They now seem dull, overshadowed by the weight of disappointment and solitude. In the shadows of a world that moves on without me, I find myself questioning if I ever mattered in the grand scheme of things. The feelings of abandonment wrap around me like a thick fog, making it hard to breathe, hard to see a way forward. Lisa Smith speaks of the perfect timing to change a logo, a mark of growth, a testament to evolution. But what if the only change I feel is the aching throb of loneliness? What if the rebranding I seek is not on a canvas, but rather within my heart? How do I find the strength to reinvent myself when all I feel is the sting of being left behind? Each day becomes a reminder that I am just a shadow in a bustling crowd, a fleeting thought in someone’s mind. The vibrant hues of joy seem to fade further, leaving only the black and white of my reality. It’s as if I’m waiting for a sign, a call to action that never arrives. I watch others change and flourish, while I remain stagnant, anchored by the weight of my own fears. The pain of feeling unseen is often unbearable. I yearn for connection, for someone to notice the subtle shifts within me, to acknowledge the struggle that lies beneath the surface. Yet, I find myself wrapped in silence, afraid to reach out, afraid to be vulnerable once more. Rebranding, as Lisa Smith suggests, is more than a visual update; it’s a reinvention of the self, an embrace of what could be. But how can I embrace change when I am still healing from the scars of the past? It feels as though I am caught in a loop, watching the world evolve while I cling to the remnants of who I was. Perhaps one day, I will gather the courage to shed my old skin and step into the light. Until then, I will carry this burden of loneliness, hoping that the dawn of tomorrow brings with it the promise of transformation. For now, I remain a distant observer, yearning for the day when I can finally say, “I am ready to change.” #Loneliness #Change #Heartbreak #ReinventYourself #EmotionalJourney