mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

PhyWorld: Physics-Faithful World Model for Video Generation

arXiv 2605.19242 ↗First posted 19 May 2026cs.CV cs.AI cs.ETcited by 3

On the map: World models → Latent predictive world models

Abstract (arXiv)

World simulators can provide safe and scalable environments for training Physical AI systems before real-world deployment. Large video generation models are emerging as a promising basis for such simulators because they can generate diverse and realistic visual futures. However, using them as world simulators requires physically faithful video continuations, namely, generated videos that preserve the physical state implied by the conditioning input, and evolve in ways consistent with basic physical principles. We propose PhyWorld, a video generation world model designed to produce temporally coherent and physically faithful scene continuations through two-stage post-training. In the first stage, we improve video-to-video continuation with flow matching fine-tuning, encouraging stable visual attributes and coherent motion dynamics across frames. In the second stage, we align generated dynamics with physical principles using Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) over physics preference pairs, guiding the model toward outputs with higher physical plausibility. To evaluate PhyWorld, we use both standard video-quality benchmarks and a dedicated physical-faithfulness benchmark with per-law scoring. Experiments show that PhyWorld improves video consistency, achieving an average score of 0.769 on VBench compared with 0.756 or below for state-of-the-art baselines. PhyWorld also improves physical plausibility, reaching an average score of 3.09 on our physical-faithfulness benchmark compared with 2.99 for the strongest baseline. These results suggest that post-training large video generation models with continuation and physics-preference signals can make them more effective world simulators for Physical AI.

Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Latent predictive world models, one of 11 directions in World models. Builds on 40 of its 64 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 19 May 2026.

Builds on

40 of 64 references.

Closest ancestors · 1

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026Inference-time Physics Alignment of Video Generative Models with Latent World Models15 Jan

Other references · 39

  1. 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,426
  2. 2025Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Modelscited by 2,536
  3. 2024CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformercited by 2,198
  4. 2025Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AIcited by 833
  5. 2025Self Forcing: Bridging the Train-Test Gap in Autoregressive Video Diffusioncited by 569
  6. 2024Sora: A Review on Background, Technology, Limitations, and Opportunities of Large Vision Modelscited by 467
  7. 2024OpenVid-1M: A Large-Scale High-Quality Dataset for Text-to-video Generationcited by 332
  8. 2026Causal World Modeling for Robot Controlcited by 289
  9. 2026Cosmos Policy: Fine-Tuning Video Models for Visuomotor Control and Planningcited by 274
  10. 2025LongLive: Real-time Interactive Long Video Generationcited by 237
  11. 2026LTX-2: Efficient Joint Audio-Visual Foundation Modelcited by 213
  12. 2025Video models are zero-shot learners and reasonerscited by 208
27 more
  1. 2025World Simulation with Video Foundation Models for Physical AIcited by 183
  2. 2025Self-Forcing++: Towards Minute-Scale High-Quality Video Generationcited by 176
  3. 2024Towards World Simulator: Crafting Physical Commonsense-Based Benchmark for Video Generationcited by 167
  4. 2026Advancing Open-source World Modelscited by 144
  5. 2025VideoPhy-2: A Challenging Action-Centric Physical Commonsense Evaluation in Video Generationcited by 141
  6. 2025Cambrian-S: Towards Spatial Supersensing in Videocited by 123
  7. 2025WorldModelBench: Judging Video Generation Models As World Modelscited by 116
  8. 2025Epona: Autoregressive Diffusion World Model for Autonomous Drivingcited by 115
  9. 2025AdaWorld: Learning Adaptable World Models with Latent Actionscited by 108
  10. 2026PointWorld: Scaling 3D World Models for In-The-Wild Robotic Manipulationcited by 74
  11. 2025LongCat-Video Technical Reportcited by 73
  12. 2025A Comprehensive Survey on World Models for Embodied AIcited by 65
  13. 2025VAGEN: Reinforcing World Model Reasoning for Multi-Turn VLM Agentscited by 60
  14. 2025A Survey: Learning Embodied Intelligence from Physical Simulators and World Modelscited by 50
  15. 2026Learning Latent Action World Models In The Wildcited by 42
  16. 2025Exploring the Evolution of Physics Cognition in Video Generation: A Surveycited by 31
  17. 2026LongCat-Next: Lexicalizing Modalities as Discrete Tokenscited by 30
  18. 2026OmniWeaving: Towards Unified Video Generation with Free-form Composition and Reasoningcited by 25
  19. 2024Hierarchical World Models as Visual Whole-Body Humanoid Controllerscited by 24
  20. 2025Generative Physical AI in Vision: A Surveycited by 24
  21. 2025VOTE: Vision-Language-Action Optimization with Trajectory Ensemble Votingcited by 22
  22. 2025Simulating the Visual World with Artificial Intelligence: A Roadmapcited by 15
  23. 2026HIERAMP: Coarse-to-Fine Autoregressive Amplification for Generative Dataset Distillationcited by 7
  24. 2026Effective MoE-based LLM Compression by Exploiting Heterogeneous Inter-Group Experts Routing Frequency and Information Densitycited by 6
  25. 20247B Fully Open Source Moxin-LLM/VLM -- From Pretraining to GRPO-based Reinforcement Learning Enhancementcited by 5
  26. 2025Open-Source Multimodal Moxin Models with Moxin-VLM and Moxin-VLAcited by 4
  27. 2025DAWM: Diffusion Action World Models for Offline Reinforcement Learning via Action-Inferred Transitionscited by 2

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 3.

3 papers.

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Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025Robot Learning from a Physical World Model
  2. 2025PhysMaster: Mastering Physical Representation for Video Generation via Reinforcement Learning
  3. 2026PhyGround: Benchmarking Physical Reasoning in Generative World Models
  4. 2026PhyCo: Learning Controllable Physical Priors for Generative Motion
  5. 2025"PhyWorldBench": A Comprehensive Evaluation of Physical Realism in Text-to-Video Models
  6. 2026PhysisForcing: Physics Reinforced World Simulator for Robotic Manipulation
  7. 2025PhysCorr: Dual-Reward DPO for Physics-Constrained Text-to-Video Generation with Automated Preference Selection
  8. 2025A Physical Coherence Benchmark for Evaluating Video Generation Models via Optical Flow-guided Frame Prediction