# A Procedural World Generation Framework for Systematic Evaluation of Continual Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.02585 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02585/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 42 of its 83 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Jun 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 42)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [Batch Normalization: Accelerating Deep Network Training by Reducing Internal Covariate Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.03167/) (2015)
- [Overcoming catastrophic forgetting in neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00796/) (2016)
- [The Cityscapes Dataset for Semantic Urban Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.01685/) (2016)
- [Delving Deep into Rectifiers: Surpassing Human-Level Performance on ImageNet Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.01852/) (2015)
- [Learning without Forgetting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.09282/) (2016)
- [CARLA: An Open Urban Driving Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.03938/) (2017)
- [iCaRL: Incremental Classifier and Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07725/) (2016)
- [Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06434/) (2015)
- [Gradient Episodic Memory for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.08840/) (2017)
- [ImageNet-trained CNNs are biased towards texture; increasing shape bias improves accuracy and robustness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12231/) (2018)
- [Continual Learning with Deep Generative Replay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.08690/) (2017)
- [Experience Replay for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.11682/) (2018)
- [Playing for Data: Ground Truth from Computer Games](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.02192/) (2016)
- [Riemannian Walk for Incremental Learning: Understanding Forgetting and Intransigence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.10112/) (2018)
- [Learning multiple visual domains with residual adapters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.08045/) (2017)
- [Predicting Depth, Surface Normals and Semantic Labels with a Common Multi-Scale Convolutional Architecture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4734/) (2014)
- [Measuring Catastrophic Forgetting in Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.02072/) (2017)
- [Variational Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10628/) (2017)
- [CORe50: a New Dataset and Benchmark for Continuous Object Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.03550/) (2017)
- [Learning from Simulated and Unsupervised Images through Adversarial Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.07828/) (2016)
- [A Probabilistic U-Net for Segmentation of Ambiguous Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05034/) (2018)
- [Selective Experience Replay for Lifelong Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.10269/) (2018)
- [Bayesian SegNet: Model Uncertainty in Deep Convolutional Encoder-Decoder Architectures for Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.02680/) (2015)
- [Towards Robust Evaluations of Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.09733/) (2018)
- [Avalanche: an End-to-End Library for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00405/) (2021)
- [Don't forget, there is more than forgetting: new metrics for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.13166/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Designing a Hybrid Neural System to Learn Real-world Crack Segmentation from Fractal-based Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.09637/) (2023)
- [Where is the Truth? The Risk of Getting Confounded in a Continual World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.06434/) (2024)
- [Lifelong Wandering: A realistic few-shot online continual learning setting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07932/) (2022)
- [synth-dacl: Does Synthetic Defect Data Enhance Segmentation Accuracy and Robustness for Real-World Bridge Inspections?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.14255/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Several families of continual learning techniques have been proposed to alleviate catastrophic interference in deep neural network training on non-stationary data. However, a comprehensive comparison and analysis of limitations remains largely open due to the inaccessibility to suitable datasets. Empirical examination not only varies immensely between individual works, it further currently relies on contrived composition of benchmarks through subdivision and concatenation of various prevalent static vision datasets. In this work, our goal is to bridge this gap by introducing a computer graphics simulation framework that repeatedly renders only upcoming urban scene fragments in an endless real-time procedural world generation process. At its core lies a modular parametric generative model with adaptable generative factors. The latter can be used to flexibly compose data streams, which significantly facilitates a detailed analysis and allows for effortless investigation of various continual learning schemes.