# How Far is Video Generation from World Model: A Physical Law Perspective

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.02385 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.02385/

## Key facts

- Cited by 212 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Latent predictive world models, one of 11 directions in World models.
- Builds on 64 of its 80 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Nov 2024.

## Placed in

- World models / [Latent predictive world models](https://mlsanity.com/wm/latent-predictive-world-models/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 64)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.08361/) (2020)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Neural Discrete Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00937/) (2017)
- [RoFormer: Enhanced Transformer with Rotary Position Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09864/) (2021)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [On the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07258/) (2021)
- [Quo Vadis, Action Recognition? A New Model and the Kinetics Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07750/) (2017)
- [Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15127/) (2023)
- [Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03458/) (2022)
- [VBench: Comprehensive Benchmark Suite for Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17982/) (2023)
- [Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02303/) (2022)
- [Dream to Control: Learning Behaviors by Latent Imagination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01603/) (2019)
- [Mastering Atari, Go, Chess and Shogi by Planning with a Learned Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.08265/) (2019)
- [Mastering Diverse Domains through World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.04104/) (2023)
- [Towards Accurate Generative Models of Video: A New Metric & Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01717/) (2018)
- [Mastering Atari with Discrete World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02193/) (2020)
- [CogVideo: Large-scale Pretraining for Text-to-Video Generation via Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15868/) (2022)
- [Tune-A-Video: One-Shot Tuning of Image Diffusion Models for Text-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.11565/) (2022)
- [Recurrent World Models Facilitate Policy Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.01999/) (2018)
- [Genie: Generative Interactive Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.15391/) (2024)
- [Text2Video-Zero: Text-to-Image Diffusion Models are Zero-Shot Video Generators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13439/) (2023)
- [Language Model Beats Diffusion -- Tokenizer is Key to Visual Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05737/) (2023)
- [GAIA-1: A Generative World Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17080/) (2023)
- [Video Enhancement with Task-Oriented Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.09078/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 212)

- [Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.03575/) (2025)
- [MAGI-1: Autoregressive Video Generation at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.13211/) (2025)
- [Video models are zero-shot learners and reasoners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.20328/) (2025)
- [DreamGen: Unlocking Generalization in Robot Learning through Video World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.12705/) (2025)
- [Motion Prompting: Controlling Video Generation with Motion Trajectories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.02700/) (2024)
- [Understanding World or Predicting Future? A Comprehensive Survey of World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14499/) (2024)
- [Do generative video models understand physical principles?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.09038/) (2025)
- [WorldScore: A Unified Evaluation Benchmark for World Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.00983/) (2025)
- [WorldModelBench: Judging Video Generation Models As World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20694/) (2025)
- [WISA: World Simulator Assistant for Physics-Aware Text-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08153/) (2025)
- [3D and 4D World Modeling: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.07996/) (2025)
- [Long-Context State-Space Video World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20171/) (2025)
- [Back to the Features: DINO as a Foundation for Video World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19468/) (2025)
- [VLIPP: Towards Physically Plausible Video Generation with Vision and Language Informed Physical Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23368/) (2025)
- [End-to-End Training for Autoregressive Video Diffusion via Self-Resampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15702/) (2025)
- [PISA Experiments: Exploring Physics Post-Training for Video Diffusion Models by Watching Stuff Drop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09595/) (2025)
- [Evaluating Newtonian Mechanics in Video Generative Models with Real Physical Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02918/) (2025)
- [World-in-World: World Models in a Closed-Loop World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.18135/) (2025)
- [ReSim: Reliable World Simulation for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09981/) (2025)
- [Are Video Models Ready as Zero-Shot Reasoners? An Empirical Study with the MME-CoF Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.26802/) (2025)
- [Reflective Planning: Vision-Language Models for Multi-Stage Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.16707/) (2025)
- [NewtonGen: Physics-Consistent and Controllable Text-to-Video Generation via Neural Newtonian Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21309/) (2025)
- [RoboScape: Physics-informed Embodied World Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.23135/) (2025)
- [Infinite-World: Scaling Interactive World Models to 1000-Frame Horizons via Pose-Free Hierarchical Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.02393/) (2026)
- [Inference-time Physics Alignment of Video Generative Models with Latent World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.10553/) (2026)
- [VaViM and VaVAM: Autonomous Driving through Video Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.15672/) (2025)
- [AI-Generated Video Detection via Perceptual Straightening](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.00583/) (2025)
- [A Very Big Video Reasoning Suite](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.20159/) (2026)
- [Selftok: Discrete Visual Tokens of Autoregression, by Diffusion, and for Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07538/) (2025)
- [Rethinking Video Generation Model for the Embodied World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.15282/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

OpenAI's Sora highlights the potential of video generation for developing world models that adhere to fundamental physical laws. However, the ability of video generation models to discover such laws purely from visual data without human priors can be questioned. A world model learning the true law should give predictions robust to nuances and correctly extrapolate on unseen scenarios. In this work, we evaluate across three key scenarios: in-distribution, out-of-distribution, and combinatorial generalization. We developed a 2D simulation testbed for object movement and collisions to generate videos deterministically governed by one or more classical mechanics laws. This provides an unlimited supply of data for large-scale experimentation and enables quantitative evaluation of whether the generated videos adhere to physical laws. We trained diffusion-based video generation models to predict object movements based on initial frames. Our scaling experiments show perfect generalization within the distribution, measurable scaling behavior for combinatorial generalization, but failure in out-of-distribution scenarios. Further experiments reveal two key insights about the generalization mechanisms of these models: (1) the models fail to abstract general physical rules and instead exhibit "case-based" generalization behavior, i.e., mimicking the closest training example; (2) when generalizing to new cases, models are observed to prioritize different factors when referencing training data: color > size > velocity > shape. Our study suggests that scaling alone is insufficient for video generation models to uncover fundamental physical laws, despite its role in Sora's broader success. See our project page at https://phyworld.github.io