Generate World

When to Use

• User has an equirectangular panorama (2:1 aspect, e.g. 4096×2048) and wants a 3D world (Gaussian splat / depth map / fused cubes) out of it.
• User wants to seed a Genie Sim scene with a generated environment rather than a hand-authored USD.
• Researcher reproducing the PanoRecon paper (arXiv 2604.07105).

Do not use for:

• USD scene authoring without a panorama input → that's the generate-scene skill in geniesim_generator.
• Asset / object library search → search-assets in geniesim_generator.
• Importing an existing USD scene into the RT Engine → just point the scene yaml's scene_usda at the existing USD (see add-robot / launch-scene). This skill is not the path for that — geniesim_world produces .ply / .gsp Gaussians today, and loading them into a scene_*.yaml is 🚧 W.I.P.

Critical Patterns

1. Out-of-band install. geniesim_world is not pulled in by geniesim bootstrap — it lives behind heavy CUDA deps (PyTorch + ml-sharp + DA360 + optional Real-ESRGAN). Install in its own conda env, separate from the rest of the stack.
2. Three external dependencies, not on pip. Need external/ml-sharp/, external/DA360/ (with checkpoint), and optionally external/realesrgan-ncnn-vulkan-…/. The external/ tree sits next to geniesim_world/ under source/.
3. DA360 checkpoint is mandatory. Either drop it at external/DA360/DA360_large.pth, pass --da360-checkpoint, or set GENIESIM_DA360_CHECKPOINT. Without it, depth prediction fails immediately.
4. Tested on RTX 5090 / CUDA 12.8. Other GPUs work but need a matching requirements-cu<XX>.txt. Don't paste the cu128 line verbatim onto a cu118 box.
5. Real-ESRGAN is optional. It improves visual fidelity but introduces synthetic texture — disable for tasks where ground-truth pixel statistics matter.

Workflow

Step 1 — Verify the layout

source/
├── geniesim_world/                              # this project
└── external/
    ├── ml-sharp/                                # git clone https://github.com/apple/ml-sharp.git
    ├── DA360/                                   # git clone https://github.com/DepthAnything/DA360.git
    │   └── DA360_large.pth                      # checkpoint (download separately)
    └── realesrgan-ncnn-vulkan-20220424-ubuntu/  # optional, super-sample binary
        └── realesrgan-ncnn-vulkan

If any external is missing, run the clone / download from the geniesim_world/README.md § "Prepare Dependencies".

Step 2 — Create a clean env and install

conda create -n geniesim_world python=3.11 -y
conda activate geniesim_world
pip install --upgrade "pip==24.0" "setuptools==69.5.1" "wheel==0.43.0"

cd source/geniesim_world
pip install --extra-index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu128 -r requirements-cu128.txt
pip install --extra-index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu128 -e .

Verify:

geniesim_world --help                            # Click group
geniesim_world create --help                     # subcommand surface

Step 3 — Generate a world from a panorama

geniesim_world create \
  --panorama path/to/scene_pano.png \
  --work-dir runs/$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S) \
  --device cuda:0

Optional knobs:

Step 4 — Inspect the work-dir

Typical artifacts under runs/<stamp>/:

runs/<stamp>/
├── pano_input.png             # the panorama (copied for provenance)
├── depth/                     # per-cube depth maps (EXR or PNG)
├── cubes/                     # cubemap faces fused from pano + depth
└── world.gsp / world.ply / …  # exported world (format depends on flags)

Step 5 — (🚧 W.I.P.) Feed into a Genie Sim scene

Loading the generated world into the RT Engine via a scene_*.yaml is not yet supported. The current contract is that geniesim_world produces .ply / .gsp Gaussians (plus per-face EXR depth + cubemap RGB); downstream consumption is via the package's own debug tooling (geniesim_world debug) and external viewers, not the RT Engine launcher. The RT-Engine load path is planned — track the Roadmap & Updates section in the root README.

Commands (copy-paste summary for the user)

# Once-off setup
conda create -n geniesim_world python=3.11 -y && conda activate geniesim_world
cd source/geniesim_world
pip install --extra-index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu128 \
  -r requirements-cu128.txt
pip install --extra-index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu128 -e .

# Generate
geniesim_world create \
  --panorama path/to/scene_pano.png \
  --work-dir runs/demo \
  --device cuda:0

Notes

• The CLI is a Click group: geniesim_world exposes subcommands, with create being the primary one. Run geniesim_world --help for the full list.
• "Generate from text" and "Generate from sparse images" are flagged COMING SOON in geniesim_world/README.md — don't promise them in the workflow.
• The env is intentionally isolated from the rest of the stack so pip install here can't break a working geniesim_ros shell.
• For sim-to-real research, the generated world's depth statistics are more reliable without --super-sample (Real-ESRGAN introduces hallucinated texture).

Resources

• CLI source: source/geniesim_world/src/geniesim_world/cli_pano.py
• README: source/geniesim_world/README.md
• AGENTS.md: source/geniesim_world/AGENTS.md
• Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.07105
• External deps: apple/ml-sharp, DepthAnything/DA360, optional xinntao/Real-ESRGAN