# FlowSteer: Guiding Few-Step Image Synthesis with Authentic Trajectories

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.18834 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.18834/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Flow matching, time series and science, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 41 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Nov 2025.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Flow matching, time series and science](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/flow-matching-time-series-and-science/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Flow Matching for Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02747/) (2022)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00364/) (2022)
- [Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01469/) (2023)
- [Qwen-Image Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.02324/) (2025)
- [One-step Diffusion with Distribution Matching Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18828/) (2023)
- [eDiff-I: Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with an Ensemble of Expert Denoisers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01324/) (2022)
- [Large Language Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09992/) (2025)
- [Latent Consistency Models: Synthesizing High-Resolution Images with Few-Step Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.04378/) (2023)
- [Adversarial Diffusion Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17042/) (2023)
- [On Distillation of Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03142/) (2022)
- [Improved Distribution Matching Distillation for Fast Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14867/) (2024)
- [Dream 7B: Diffusion Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15487/) (2025)
- [Consistency Trajectory Models: Learning Probability Flow ODE Trajectory of Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02279/) (2023)
- [Improved Techniques for Training Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.14189/) (2023)
- [From Slow Bidirectional to Fast Autoregressive Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.07772/) (2024)
- [InstaFlow: One Step is Enough for High-Quality Diffusion-Based Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06380/) (2023)
- [One Step Diffusion via Shortcut Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.12557/) (2024)
- [Make-An-Audio: Text-To-Audio Generation with Prompt-Enhanced Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12661/) (2023)
- [Simplifying, Stabilizing and Scaling Continuous-Time Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.11081/) (2024)
- [Fast High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Adversarial Diffusion Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12015/) (2024)
- [SDXL-Lightning: Progressive Adversarial Diffusion Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13929/) (2024)
- [Step-Video-T2V Technical Report: The Practice, Challenges, and Future of Video Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.10248/) (2025)
- [UFOGen: You Forward Once Large Scale Text-to-Image Generation via Diffusion GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09257/) (2023)
- [Hyper-SD: Trajectory Segmented Consistency Model for Efficient Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13686/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [DUO-VSR: Dual-Stream Distillation for One-Step Video Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.22271/) (2026)
- [AudioX-Turbo: A Unified Framework for Efficient Anything-to-Audio Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.12555/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

With the success of flow matching in visual generation, sampling efficiency remains a critical bottleneck for its practical application. Among flow models' accelerating methods, ReFlow has been somehow overlooked although it has theoretical consistency with flow matching. This is primarily due to its suboptimal performance in practical scenarios compared to consistency distillation and score distillation. In this work, we investigate this issue within the ReFlow framework and propose FlowSteer, a method unlocks the potential of ReFlow-based distillation by guiding the student along teacher's authentic generation trajectories. We first identify that Piecewised ReFlow's performance is hampered by a critical distribution mismatch during the training and propose Online Trajectory Alignment(OTA) to resolve it. Then, we introduce a adversarial distillation objective applied directly on the ODE trajectory, improving the student's adherence to the teacher's generation trajectory. Furthermore, we find and fix a previously undiscovered flaw in the widely-used FlowMatchEulerDiscreteScheduler that largely degrades few-step inference quality. Our experiment result on SD3 demonstrates our method's efficacy.