# PanoWorld-X: Generating Explorable Panoramic Worlds via Sphere-Aware Video Diffusion

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24997 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.24997/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in 3D, point cloud and scene generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 58 of its 64 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Sep 2025.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [3D, point cloud and scene generation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/3d-point-cloud-and-scene-generation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 58)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10683/) (2019)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20314/) (2025)
- [Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15127/) (2023)
- [CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06072/) (2024)
- [HunyuanVideo: A Systematic Framework For Large Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03603/) (2024)
- [AnimateDiff: Animate Your Personalized Text-to-Image Diffusion Models without Specific Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04725/) (2023)
- [Language Model Beats Diffusion -- Tokenizer is Key to Visual Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05737/) (2023)
- [MotionCtrl: A Unified and Flexible Motion Controller for Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03641/) (2023)
- [VideoCrafter1: Open Diffusion Models for High-Quality Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.19512/) (2023)
- [VideoLLaMA 3: Frontier Multimodal Foundation Models for Image and Video Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13106/) (2025)
- [CameraCtrl: Enabling Camera Control for Text-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02101/) (2024)
- [ViewCrafter: Taming Video Diffusion Models for High-fidelity Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.02048/) (2024)
- [Light Field Networks: Neural Scene Representations with Single-Evaluation Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02634/) (2021)
- [Diffusion Models Are Real-Time Game Engines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.14837/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Vision-Language-Action Models for Embodied AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14093/) (2024)
- [Aligning Cyber Space with Physical World: A Comprehensive Survey on Embodied AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06886/) (2024)
- [History-Guided Video Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06764/) (2025)
- [A Language Agent for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10813/) (2023)
- [AC3D: Analyzing and Improving 3D Camera Control in Video Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18673/) (2024)
- [ReconX: Reconstruct Any Scene from Sparse Views with Video Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.16767/) (2024)
- [DimensionX: Create Any 3D and 4D Scenes from a Single Image with Controllable Video Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.04928/) (2024)
- [FIFO-Diffusion: Generating Infinite Videos from Text without Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.11473/) (2024)
- [GameGen-X: Interactive Open-world Game Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.00769/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [WorldStereo: Bridging Camera-Guided Video Generation and Scene Reconstruction via 3D Geometric Memories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.02049/) (2026)
- [AlayaVista: Streaming World Modeling from Panoramic States to Perspective Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.14462/) (2026)
- [Genie Sim PanoWorld: An Infinite Indoor 3D World Generation Pipeline via Panoramic Scene Modeling and Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.26646/) (2026)
- [StateFlow: Building, Evolving, and Accessing 3D World States for Previsualization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.12314/) (2026)
- [MUGEN: Interactive Panoramic World Exploration via Camera Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.38077/) (2026)
- [EPIC: Epipolar-Consistent 360deg Immersive Stereo Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.38689/) (2026)
- [World Observer: Joint Actor-Observer Generation for Persistent World Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.02162/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Generating a complete and explorable 360-degree visual world enables a wide range of downstream applications. While prior works have advanced the field, they remain constrained by either narrow field-of-view limitations, which hinder the synthesis of continuous and holistic scenes, or insufficient camera controllability that restricts free exploration by users or autonomous agents. To address this, we propose PanoWorld-X, a novel framework for high-fidelity and controllable panoramic video generation with diverse camera trajectories. Specifically, we first construct a large-scale dataset of panoramic video-exploration route pairs by simulating camera trajectories in virtual 3D environments via Unreal Engine. As the spherical geometry of panoramic data misaligns with the inductive priors from conventional video diffusion, we then introduce a Sphere-Aware Diffusion Transformer architecture that reprojects equirectangular features onto the spherical surface to model geometric adjacency in latent space, significantly enhancing visual fidelity and spatiotemporal continuity. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our PanoWorld-X achieves superior performance in various aspects, including motion range, control precision, and visual quality, underscoring its potential for real-world applications.