mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Holistic Evaluation of Multimodal LLMs on Spatial Intelligence

arXiv 2508.13142 ↗First posted 18 Aug 2025cs.CV cs.CL cs.LGcited by 28

On the map: Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models → Embodied and 3D vision-language models

Abstract (arXiv)

Multimodal models have achieved remarkable progress in recent years. Nevertheless, they continue to exhibit notable limitations in spatial understanding and reasoning, the very capability that anchors artificial general intelligence in the physical world. With the recent release of GPT-5, allegedly the most powerful AI model to date, it is timely to examine where the leading models (GPT, Gemini, Grok, Seed, Qwen, and Intern) stand on the path toward spatial intelligence (SI). We thus propose EASI for holistic Evaluation of multimodAl LLMs on Spatial Intelligence. EASI conceptualizes a comprehensive taxonomy of spatial tasks that unifies existing benchmarks and a growing collection of newly curated ones, enabling systematic evaluation of state-of-the-art models. In this report, we conduct the study across eight key benchmarks, at a cost exceeding ten billion total tokens. Our empirical study then reveals that (1) GPT-5 demonstrates unprecedented strength in SI, yet (2) still falls short of human performance significantly across a broad spectrum of SI-tasks. Moreover, we (3) show that SI-tasks expose greater model capability deficiency than non-SI tasks, to the extent that (4) proprietary models do not exhibit a decisive advantage when facing the most difficult ones. In addition, we conduct a qualitative evaluation across a diverse set of scenarios that are intuitive for humans, yet fail the most advanced multimodal models. EASI is an ongoing community effort: we have open-sourced the EASI codebase that provides a one-stop and reproducible solution with standardized interfaces, integrated protocols and prompts that significantly reduce the friction of configuring and running multiple benchmarks; we have also launched an accompanying EASI leaderboard to provide a continually updated snapshot of model performance across the full SI spectrum, accelerating collective progress toward robust SI.

Key facts. Cited by 28 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Embodied and 3D vision-language models, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models. Builds on 64 of its 78 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 18 Aug 2025.

Builds on

64 of 78 references.

Closest ancestors · 22

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025VisualTrans: A Benchmark for Real-World Visual Transformation Reasoning6 Aug
  2. 2025VLM4D: Towards Spatiotemporal Awareness in Vision Language Models4 Aug
  3. 2025LRR-Bench: Left, Right or Rotate? Vision-Language models Still Struggle With Spatial Understanding Tasks27 Jul
  4. 2025MindCube: Spatial Mental Modeling from Limited Views26 Jun
  5. 2025InternSpatial: A Comprehensive Dataset for Spatial Reasoning in Vision-Language Models23 Jun
  6. 2025SpaCE-10: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Multimodal Large Language Models in Compositional Spatial Intelligence9 Jun
  7. 2025RoboRefer: Towards Spatial Referring with Reasoning in Vision-Language Models for Robotics4 Jun
  8. 2025OmniSpatial: Towards Comprehensive Spatial Reasoning Benchmark for Vision Language Models3 Jun
  9. 20253DRS: MLLMs Need 3D-Aware Representation Supervision for Scene Understanding2 Jun
  10. 2025Learning from Videos for 3D World: Enhancing MLLMs with 3D Vision Geometry Priors30 May
  11. 2025MMSI-Bench: A Benchmark for Multi-Image Spatial Intelligence29 May
  12. 2025Multi-SpatialMLLM: Multi-Frame Spatial Understanding with Multi-Modal Large Language Models22 May
10 more
  1. 2025Towards Visuospatial Cognition via Hierarchical Fusion of Visual Experts18 May
  2. 2025Ross3D: Reconstructive Visual Instruction Tuning with 3D-Awareness2 Apr
  3. 2025Spatial457: A Diagnostic Benchmark for 6D Spatial Reasoning of Large Multimodal Models12 Feb
  4. 2024Thinking in Space: How Multimodal Large Language Models See, Remember, and Recall Spaces18 Dec
  5. 2024SpatialBot: Precise Spatial Understanding with Vision Language Models19 Jun
  6. 2024EmbSpatial-Bench: Benchmarking Spatial Understanding for Embodied Tasks with Large Vision-Language Models9 Jun
  7. 2024SpatialRGPT: Grounded Spatial Reasoning in Vision Language Models3 Jun
  8. 2024Proximity QA: Unleashing the Power of Multi-Modal Large Language Models for Spatial Proximity Analysis31 Jan
  9. 2024SpatialVLM: Endowing Vision-Language Models with Spatial Reasoning Capabilities22 Jan
  10. 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Control28 Jul

Other references · 42

  1. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
  2. 2024GPT-4o System Cardcited by 4,467
  3. 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,777
  4. 2024LLaVA-OneVision: Easy Visual Task Transfercited by 2,669
  5. 2023InternVL: Scaling up Vision Foundation Models and Aligning for Generic Visual-Linguistic Taskscited by 2,534
  6. 2023Qwen-VL: A Versatile Vision-Language Model for Understanding, Localization, Text Reading, and Beyondcited by 2,179
  7. 2023MMBench: Is Your Multi-modal Model an All-around Player?cited by 2,105
  8. 2023MMMU: A Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding and Reasoning Benchmark for Expert AGIcited by 2,044
  9. 2022Learn to Explain: Multimodal Reasoning via Thought Chains for Science Question Answeringcited by 1,881
  10. 2025InternVL3: Exploring Advanced Training and Test-Time Recipes for Open-Source Multimodal Modelscited by 1,769
  11. 2023MME: A Comprehensive Evaluation Benchmark for Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 1,624
  12. 2023MathVista: Evaluating Mathematical Reasoning of Foundation Models in Visual Contextscited by 1,582
30 more
  1. 2022ChartQA: A Benchmark for Question Answering about Charts with Visual and Logical Reasoningcited by 1,449
  2. 2023MM-Vet: Evaluating Large Multimodal Models for Integrated Capabilitiescited by 1,221
  3. 2024Are We on the Right Way for Evaluating Large Vision-Language Models?cited by 893
  4. 2025Emerging Properties in Unified Multimodal Pretrainingcited by 855
  5. 2024Cambrian-1: A Fully Open, Vision-Centric Exploration of Multimodal LLMscited by 822
  6. 2023HallusionBench: An Advanced Diagnostic Suite for Entangled Language Hallucination and Visual Illusion in Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 572
  7. 2023Otter: A Multi-Modal Model with In-Context Instruction Tuningcited by 548
  8. 2024BLINK: Multimodal Large Language Models Can See but Not Perceivecited by 529
  9. 2024VLMEvalKit: An Open-Source Toolkit for Evaluating Large Multi-Modality Modelscited by 443
  10. 2025Seed1.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 367
  11. 2024LMMs-Eval: Reality Check on the Evaluation of Large Multimodal Modelscited by 344
  12. 2024MMLongBench-Doc: Benchmarking Long-context Document Understanding with Visualizationscited by 174
  13. 2024OCRBench v2: An Improved Benchmark for Evaluating Large Multimodal Models on Visual Text Localization and Reasoningcited by 165
  14. 20243DSRBench: A Comprehensive 3D Spatial Reasoning Benchmarkcited by 133
  15. 2025Video-Holmes: Can MLLM Think Like Holmes for Complex Video Reasoning?cited by 107
  16. 2025EgoLife: Towards Egocentric Life Assistantcited by 86
  17. 2025Zebra-CoT: A Dataset for Interleaved Vision Language Reasoningcited by 78
  18. 2024PathMMU: A Massive Multimodal Expert-Level Benchmark for Understanding and Reasoning in Pathologycited by 43
  19. 2024MEGA-Bench: Scaling Multimodal Evaluation to over 500 Real-World Taskscited by 41
  20. 2024A-Bench: Are LMMs Masters at Evaluating AI-generated Images?cited by 39
  21. 2024Core Knowledge Deficits in Multi-Modal Language Modelscited by 38
  22. 2024Parrot: Multilingual Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 30
  23. 2025SITE: towards Spatial Intelligence Thorough Evaluationcited by 26
  24. 2025EgoExoBench: A Benchmark for First- and Third-person View Video Understanding in MLLMscited by 22
  25. 2025Unfolding Spatial Cognition: Evaluating Multimodal Models on Visual Simulationscited by 21
  26. 2024Space3D-Bench: Spatial 3D Question Answering Benchmarkcited by 17
  27. 2025MMCR: Advancing Visual Language Model in Multimodal Multi-Turn Contextual Reasoningcited by 16
  28. 2025SIRI-Bench: Challenging VLMs' Spatial Intelligence through Complex Reasoning Taskscited by 4
  29. 2025SPARE: Single-Pass Annotation with Reference-Guided Evaluation for Automatic Process Supervision and Reward Modellingcited by 4
  30. 2025GOBench: Benchmarking Geometric Optics Generation and Understanding of MLLMscited by 2

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 5; 2026: 23.

28 papers.

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  1. 2025Think with 3D: Geometric Imagination Grounded Spatial Reasoning from Limited Viewscited by 58
  2. 2025ThinkMorph: Emergent Properties in Multimodal Interleaved Chain-of-Thought Reasoningcited by 55
  3. 2026SenseNova-U1: Unifying Multimodal Understanding and Generation with NEO-unify Architecturecited by 27
  4. 2025QuantiPhy: A Quantitative Benchmark Evaluating Physical Reasoning Abilities of Vision-Language Modelscited by 19
  5. 2026Thinking with Geometry: Active Geometry Integration for Spatial Reasoningcited by 14
  6. 2025SpatialDreamer: Incentivizing Spatial Reasoning via Active Mental Imagerycited by 10
  7. 2026SpatiaLab: Can Vision-Language Models Perform Spatial Reasoning in the Wild?cited by 10
  8. 2026CityCube: Benchmarking Cross-view Spatial Reasoning on Vision-Language Models in Urban Environmentscited by 8
  9. 2026SpatialWorld: Benchmarking Interactive Spatial Reasoning of Multimodal Agents in Real-World Taskscited by 6
  10. 2025MASS: Motion-Aware Spatial-Temporal Grounding for Physics Reasoning and Comprehension in Vision-Language Modelscited by 5
  11. 2026Holi-Spatial: Evolving Video Streams into Holistic 3D Spatial Intelligencecited by 5
  12. 2026Vision Language Models Cannot Reason About Physical Transformationcited by 4
16 more
  1. 20263ViewSense: Spatial and Mental Perspective Reasoning from Orthographic Views in Vision-Language Modelscited by 4
  2. 2026MapTab: A Diagnostic Benchmark for Long-Horizon Multi-Criteria Multimodal Reasoning on Heterogeneous Topological Graphscited by 3
  3. 2026SokoBench: Evaluating Long-Horizon Planning and Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 2
  4. 2026MCERF: Advancing Multimodal LLM Evaluation of Engineering Documentation with Enhanced Retrievalcited by 2
  5. 2026Proxy3D: Efficient 3D Representations for Vision-Language Models via Semantic Clustering and Alignmentcited by 2
  6. 2026SSR: Pushing the Limit of Spatial Intelligence with Structured Scene Reasoningcited by 1
  7. 2026Limits of Spatial Imagery Reasoning in Frontier LLM Modelscited by 1
  8. 2026TimeSpot: Benchmarking Geo-Temporal Understanding in Vision-Language Models in Real-World Settingscited by 0
  9. 2026SpatialImaginer: Towards Adaptive Visual Imagination for Spatial Reasoningcited by 0
  10. 2026SpaceDG: Benchmarking Spatial Intelligence under Visual Degradationcited by 0
  11. 2026GeoWeaver: Grounding Visual Tokens with Geometric Evidence before Scene Reasoningcited by 0
  12. 2026VGenST-Bench: A Benchmark for Spatio-Temporal Reasoning via Active Video Synthesiscited by 0
  13. 2026Dual-Pathway Geometry-Aware MLLM for Spatial Intelligencecited by 0
  14. 2026The Art of Interrogation: Consistency Amplifies Factuality in Spatial Reasoningcited by 0
  15. 2026Chain of Spatial Thoughts: Modality-Agnostic Spatial Grounding for Vision Language Modelscited by 0
  16. 2026Metric-Bench: Exploring In-context Spatial Metric Reasoning in VLMs for Indoor Scenescited by 0

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  1. 2026From Where Things Are to What They Are For: Benchmarking Spatial-Functional Intelligence in Multimodal LLMs
  2. 2025Scaling Spatial Intelligence with Multimodal Foundation Models
  3. 2025SpatialBench: Benchmarking Multimodal Large Language Models for Spatial Cognition
  4. 202511Plus-Bench: Demystifying Multimodal LLM Spatial Reasoning with Cognitive-Inspired Analysis
  5. 2025SpatialScore: Towards Comprehensive Evaluation for Spatial Intelligence
  6. 2025A Survey of Large Language Model-Powered Spatial Intelligence Across Scales: Advances in Embodied Agents, Smart Cities, and Earth Science
  7. 2025Spatial Reasoning in Multimodal Large Language Models: A Survey of Tasks, Benchmarks and Methods
  8. 2025Scaling and Beyond: Advancing Spatial Reasoning in MLLMs Requires New Recipes