mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

What about gravity in video generation? Post-Training Newton's Laws with Verifiable Rewards

arXiv 2512.00425 ↗First posted 29 Nov 2025cs.CVcited by 23

On the map: Diffusion models → Video generation

Abstract (arXiv)

Recent video diffusion models can synthesize visually compelling clips, yet often violate basic physical laws-objects float, accelerations drift, and collisions behave inconsistently-revealing a persistent gap between visual realism and physical realism. We propose textttNewtonRewards, the first physics-grounded post-training framework for video generation based on textitverifiable rewards. Instead of relying on human or VLM feedback, textttNewtonRewards extracts textitmeasurable proxies from generated videos using frozen utility models: optical flow serves as a proxy for velocity, while high-level appearance features serve as a proxy for mass. These proxies enable explicit enforcement of Newtonian structure through two complementary rewards: a Newtonian kinematic constraint enforcing constant-acceleration dynamics, and a mass conservation reward preventing trivial, degenerate solutions. We evaluate textttNewtonRewards on five Newtonian Motion Primitives (free fall, horizontal/parabolic throw, and ramp sliding down/up) using our newly constructed large-scale benchmark, textttNewtonBench-60K. Across all primitives in visual and physics metrics, textttNewtonRewards consistently improves physical plausibility, motion smoothness, and temporal coherence over prior post-training methods. It further maintains strong performance under out-of-distribution shifts in height, speed, and friction. Our results show that physics-grounded verifiable rewards offer a scalable path toward physics-aware video generation.

Key facts. Cited by 23 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Video generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 70 of its 78 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 29 Nov 2025.

Builds on

70 of 78 references.

Closest ancestors · 21

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025MoAlign: Motion-Centric Representation Alignment for Video Diffusion Models21 Oct
  2. 2025LikePhys: Evaluating Intuitive Physics Understanding in Video Diffusion Models via Likelihood Preference13 Oct
  3. 2025PhysCtrl: Generative Physics for Controllable and Physics-Grounded Video Generation24 Sep
  4. 2025Seedance 1.0: Exploring the Boundaries of Video Generation Models10 Jun
  5. 2025VideoREPA: Learning Physics for Video Generation through Relational Alignment with Foundation Models29 May
  6. 2025VLIPP: Towards Physically Plausible Video Generation with Vision and Language Informed Physical Prior30 Mar
  7. 2025PISA Experiments: Exploring Physics Post-Training for Video Diffusion Models by Watching Stuff Drop12 Mar
  8. 2024LTX-Video: Realtime Video Latent Diffusion30 Dec
  9. 2024AKiRa: Augmentation Kit on Rays for optical video generation18 Dec
  10. 2024PhyT2V: LLM-Guided Iterative Self-Refinement for Physics-Grounded Text-to-Video Generation30 Nov
  11. 2024CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformer12 Aug
  12. 2024Lumiere: A Space-Time Diffusion Model for Video Generation23 Jan
9 more
  1. 2023SparseCtrl: Adding Sparse Controls to Text-to-Video Diffusion Models28 Nov
  2. 2023Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasets25 Nov
  3. 2023GPT4Motion: Scripting Physical Motions in Text-to-Video Generation via Blender-Oriented GPT Planning21 Nov
  4. 2023Language Model Beats Diffusion -- Tokenizer is Key to Visual Generation9 Oct
  5. 2023LLM-grounded Video Diffusion Models29 Sep
  6. 2023LAVIE: High-Quality Video Generation with Cascaded Latent Diffusion Models26 Sep
  7. 2023Align your Latents: High-Resolution Video Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models18 Apr
  8. 2022Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Models5 Oct
  9. 2022Video Diffusion Models7 Apr

Other references · 49

  1. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 8,851
  2. 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learningcited by 6,146
  3. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 5,931
  4. 2024SAM 2: Segment Anything in Images and Videoscited by 2,784
  5. 2025Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Modelscited by 2,536
  6. 2020RAFT: Recurrent All-Pairs Field Transforms for Optical Flowcited by 2,385
  7. 2022Make-A-Video: Text-to-Video Generation without Text-Video Datacited by 1,725
  8. 2024HunyuanVideo: A Systematic Framework For Large Video Generative Modelscited by 1,597
  9. 2024Depth Anything V2cited by 1,385
  10. 2024Tulu 3: Pushing Frontiers in Open Language Model Post-Trainingcited by 988
  11. 2022CogVideo: Large-scale Pretraining for Text-to-Video Generation via Transformerscited by 973
  12. 2025Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AIcited by 833
37 more
  1. 2025V-JEPA 2: Self-Supervised Video Models Enable Understanding, Prediction and Planningcited by 738
  2. 2024Genie: Generative Interactive Environmentscited by 706
  3. 2024Open-Sora: Democratizing Efficient Video Production for Allcited by 637
  4. 2023GAIA-1: A Generative World Model for Autonomous Drivingcited by 618
  5. 2022Google Scanned Objects: A High-Quality Dataset of 3D Scanned Household Itemscited by 601
  6. 2023Learning Interactive Real-World Simulatorscited by 440
  7. 2022Kubric: A scalable dataset generatorcited by 373
  8. 2025Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards Implicitly Incentivizes Correct Reasoning in Base LLMscited by 276
  9. 2024Navigation World Modelscited by 262
  10. 2023Emu Video: Factorizing Text-to-Video Generation by Explicit Image Conditioningcited by 254
  11. 2025Video models are zero-shot learners and reasonerscited by 208
  12. 2024How Far is Video Generation from World Model: A Physical Law Perspectivecited by 204
  13. 2024MimicMotion: High-Quality Human Motion Video Generation with Confidence-aware Pose Guidancecited by 196
  14. 2025GAIA-2: A Controllable Multi-View Generative World Model for Autonomous Drivingcited by 178
  15. 2024PhysGen: Rigid-Body Physics-Grounded Image-to-Video Generationcited by 169
  16. 2024ControlNeXt: Powerful and Efficient Control for Image and Video Generationcited by 158
  17. 2025Do generative video models understand physical principles?cited by 151
  18. 2025VideoPhy-2: A Challenging Action-Centric Physical Commonsense Evaluation in Video Generationcited by 141
  19. 2025GameFactory: Creating New Games with Generative Interactive Videoscited by 124
  20. 2025Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards: GRPO's Effective Loss, Dynamics, and Success Amplificationcited by 108
  21. 2025Controllable Video Generation: A Surveycited by 93
  22. 2025WISA: World Simulator Assistant for Physics-Aware Text-to-Video Generationcited by 87
  23. 2025Intuitive physics understanding emerges from self-supervised pretraining on natural videoscited by 66
  24. 2025A Survey of World Models for Autonomous Drivingcited by 60
  25. 2025Robotic World Model: A Neural Network Simulator for Robust Policy Optimization in Roboticscited by 47
  26. 2025Evaluating Newtonian Mechanics in Video Generative Models with Real Physical Systemscited by 44
  27. 2025PhysAnimator: Physics-Guided Generative Cartoon Animationcited by 40
  28. 2025NewtonGen: Physics-Consistent and Controllable Text-to-Video Generation via Neural Newtonian Dynamicscited by 40
  29. 2025RLVR-World: Training World Models with Reinforcement Learningcited by 38
  30. 2024AutoVFX: Physically Realistic Video Editing from Natural Language Instructionscited by 27
  31. 2024E.T. the Exceptional Trajectories: Text-to-camera-trajectory generation with character awarenesscited by 24
  32. 2025Generative Physical AI in Vision: A Surveycited by 24
  33. 2025Hierarchical Fine-grained Preference Optimization for Physically Plausible Video Generationcited by 20
  34. 2025TRAVL: A Recipe for Making Video-Language Models Better Judges of Physics Implausibilitycited by 16
  35. 2025Synthetic Video Enhances Physical Fidelity in Video Synthesiscited by 15
  36. 2025PhysMaster: Mastering Physical Representation for Video Generation via Reinforcement Learningcited by 10
  37. 2025Hummingbird: High Fidelity Image Generation via Multimodal Context Alignmentcited by 3

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 23.

23 papers.

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By area:

  1. 2026VGGRPO: Towards World-Consistent Video Generation with 4D Latent Rewardcited by 19
  2. 2026PhysInOne: Visual Physics Learning and Reasoning in One Suitecited by 9
  3. 2026ACWM-Phys: Investigating Generalized Physical Interaction in Action-Conditioned Video World Modelscited by 9
  4. 2026Olaf-World: Orienting Latent Actions for Video World Modelingcited by 8
  5. 2026PhyRPR: Training-Free Physics-Constrained Video Generationcited by 6
  6. 2026Evolution of Video Generative Foundationscited by 6
  7. 2026Toward Native Multimodal Modeling: A Roadmapcited by 6
  8. 2026Human Cognition in Machines: A Unified Perspective of World Modelscited by 5
  9. 2026LaMo: Self-Supervised Latent Motion Priors for Physical Realism in Video Generationcited by 4
  10. 2026CausalMotion: Structured Physical Reasoning as Keyframe and Trajectory Guidance for Training-Free Video Generationcited by 4
  11. 2026When Physical Preferences Meet Semantic Constraints: Physical and Semantic Direct Preference Optimization for Text-to-Video Generationcited by 3
  12. 2026PhysEditWorld: A Large-Scale Dataset Toward Physics-Editable World Modelscited by 2
11 more
  1. 2026KineBench: Benchmarking Embodied World Models via IDM-Free Kinematic Groundingcited by 2
  2. 2026Off-Manifold Refinement: Guiding Video Generators with a Frozen World Modelcited by 2
  3. 2026PISCES: Annotation-free Text-to-Video Post-Training via Optimal Transport-Aligned Rewardscited by 1
  4. 2026FrameDiT: Diffusion Transformer with Matrix Attention for Efficient Video Generationcited by 1
  5. 2026Physics-Informed Video Generation via Mixture-of-Experts Latent Alignmentcited by 1
  6. 2026NEXUS: Neural Energy Fields for Physically Consistent Contact-Rich 3D Object Dynamicscited by 1
  7. 2026PhysiFormer: Learning to Simulate Mechanics in World Spacecited by 1
  8. 2026Apple-π: Benchmarking Thinking with Video Towards Law-Grounded Physical Intelligencecited by 1
  9. 2026Thinking in Video: Can Video Generators Really Reason About the Real World?cited by 1
  10. 2026Principia: Relational Physics Tests for Video Modelscited by 0
  11. 2026PhysicsLENS: Diagnosing Physical Property Blindness in Video Generation Modelscited by 0

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  1. 2025Objects in Generated Videos Are Slower Than They Appear: Models Suffer Sub-Earth Gravity and Don't Know Galileo's Principle...for now
  2. 2025Physics-Guided Motion Loss for Video Generation Model
  3. 2026PhyGround: Benchmarking Physical Reasoning in Generative World Models
  4. 2026Does Physics Live in the Activations? Localizing Physical Quantities in Video Diffusion Models
  5. 2026PhyCo: Learning Controllable Physical Priors for Generative Motion
  6. 2025Force Prompting: Video Generation Models Can Learn and Generalize Physics-based Control Signals
  7. 2025MoReGen: Multi-Agent Motion-Reasoning Engine for Code-based Text-to-Video Synthesis
  8. 2026Learning Explicit Physical Parameter Control and Benchmarking for Video Generation