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Isaac Sim

NVIDIA Isaac Sim™ is a simulation platform built on NVIDIA Omniverse, designed to develop, test, train, and deploy AI-powered robots in realistic virtual environments. It supports importing robotic systems from common formats such as URDF, MJCF, and CAD. The simulator leverages high-fidelity, GPU-accelerated physics engines to simulate accurate dynamics and support multi-sensor RTX rendering at scale. It comes equipped with end-to-end workflows including synthetic data generation, reinforcement learning, ROS integration, and digital twin simulation. Isaac Sim provides the infrastructure needed to support robotics development at any stage.

Key Features

• Asset Import & Export: Importing and exporting robots and environments from and to non-USD format.
• Robot Tuning: Optimize robot for physics accuracy, computation efficiency, or photorealism
• Robot Simulation: Tools for moving robots, such as controllers, motion generation and kinematics solvers, and policy integration.
• Sensors: RTX and physics-based sensors

Key Applications

• Isaac Lab: GPU-accelerated framework built for reinforcement learning, imitation learning, and motion planning.
• ROS Bridge: Integration with Robot Operating System (ROS).
• Synthetic Data Generation: Collection of SDG tools

Documentation

For the latest Isaac Sim documentation, see Isaac Sim Documentation. Follow these links to get started:

• Tutorials
• Assets

Prerequisites and Environment Setup

Ensure your system is set up with the following before building Isaac Sim:

• Operating System: Windows 11 or Linux (Ubuntu 22.04/24.04)

(Linux) Ubuntu 24.04 Building with Ubuntu 24.04 requires GCC/G++ 11 to be installed, GCC/G++ 12+ is not supported.

• GPU: For additional information on GPU features and requirements, see NVIDIA GPU Requirements

#### Local Workstation

Min	Recommended	Best
RTX 4080	RTX 5080	RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation
	RTX 5880 Ada	RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell Workstation

#### Datacenter

Min	Recommended	Best
A40	L40S	RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server
	L20

• Driver: See NVIDIA Driver Requirements

• Internet Access: Required for downloading the Omniverse Kit SDK, extensions, and tools.

Required Software Dependencies

• Git: For version control and repository management

• Git LFS: For managing large files within the repository

• (Windows - C++ Only) Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 or 2026:

• Install Visual Studio 2026, Windows SDK, MSVC using Winget by running the following command in PowerShell:

powershell winget install --id=Microsoft.VisualStudio.Community -e --override "--add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.NativeDesktop --includeRecommended"

Additional information on Windows development configuration

• (Linux) build-essentials: A package that includes make and other essential tools for building applications. For Ubuntu, install with:

bash sudo apt-get install build-essential

(Linux) ⚠️ Please use GCC/G++ 11, higher versions are not supported yet. To install GCC/G++ 11, run the following commands: bash sudo apt-get install gcc-11 g++-11 sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-11 200 sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-11 200

(Linux aarch64) ⚠️ On aarch64 hosts (e.g. DGX Spark), X11 development headers are required to build Python packages that lack pre-built wheels: bash sudo apt-get install -y libx11-dev xorg-dev

Compiler Version Check ⚠️ We have added a version checker to our build process. If you do not have the default versions you are still able to execute a build, add --skip-compiler-version-check to build.[sh/bat] when building. Proceed at your own risk, unsupported build environments may encounter build and runtime issues.

Recommended Software

• (Linux) Docker: For containerized development and deployment. Ensure non-root users have Docker permissions.

• (Linux) NVIDIA Container Toolkit: For GPU-accelerated containerized development and deployment. Installation and Configuring Docker steps are required.

• VSCode (or your preferred IDE): For code editing and development

Quick Start

This section guides you through building Isaac Sim from source code.

1. Clone the Repository

git clone -b main https://github.com/isaac-sim/IsaacSim.git isaacsim
cd isaacsim
git lfs install
git lfs pull

2. Build

Run the following command to initiate the configuration wizard:

Linux:

Confirm that GCC/G++ 11 is being used before building using the following commands:

gcc --version
g++ --version

./build.sh

Windows:

⚠️ Windows Path Length Limitation Windows has a path length limitation of 260 characters. If you encounter errors related missing files or other build errors, try moving the repository to a shorter path.

build.bat

3. Run

⚠️ Startup Time The first time loading Isaac Sim may take up to several minutes as Extensions and Shader are loaded and cached. The subsequent startup time should be in the ranges of 10-30 seconds depending on hardware configuration.

Navigate to the corresponding binary directory for your platform and run the executable.

Linux (x86_64):

cd _build/linux-x86_64/release
./isaac-sim.sh

Linux (aarch64):

cd _build/linux-aarch64/release
./isaac-sim.sh

Windows:

cd _build/windows-x86_64/release
isaac-sim.bat

NOTE: If this is your first time building Isaac Sim, you will be prompted to accept the Omniverse Licensing Terms.

Advanced Build Options

Isaac Sim uses a custom build system with the following key options:

Core Build Options

• -c, --clean: Clean the repository and exit
• -x, --rebuild: Clean the repository before building (full rebuild)
• -h, --help: Show all available build options

Configuration Options

• --config [debug|release]: Specify build configuration (default: both)
• -d, --debug: Build only debug configuration
• -r, --release: Build only release configuration

Advanced Options

• -j NUM_CORES, --jobs NUM_CORES: Limit the number of parallel compilation jobs
• -v, --verbose: Enable verbose build output
• -q, --quiet: Suppress build output

Build Steps Control

• --fetch-only: Only fetch dependencies and stop
• -g, --generate: Generate projects, stage files and stop
• -s, --stage: Stage files, skip generation step
• -b, --build-only: Only perform building step, skip others
• --post-build-only: Only perform post-build step

Usage

Congratulations on installing Isaac Sim! To get started with using Isaac Sim, follow these Quick Tutorials. For more information, visit our full documentation.

Additional Build Tools

Beyond building and running from source (see Quick Start), Isaac Sim can also be packaged as a standalone binary archive, built as Python wheels, or deployed as a Docker container.

Binary Package

Build a standalone redistributable binary package from source. A successful build is required before packaging.

Linux:

./repo.sh package --config release -m isaac-sim-standalone

Note: The same command works on both x86_64 and aarch64 hosts. The build system detects the platform automatically.

Windows:

.\repo.bat package --config release -m isaac-sim-standalone

The packaged archive is written to the _build/packages/ directory.

PIP Packages

Build Isaac Sim Python (PIP) wheels locally from a successful build. Pre-built wheels for released versions are also available on pypi.nvidia.com; see Install Isaac Sim using PIP for the install-only path.

A successful build is required before packaging.

Linux:

./repo.sh python_package --create
./repo.sh comment_archive_deps
./repo.sh python_package --wheel

Windows:

.\repo.bat python_package --create
.\repo.bat comment_archive_deps
.\repo.bat python_package --wheel

The three steps, in order:

1. python_package --create stages per-package source trees under _build/packages/python/ from the wheel definitions in python_packages.toml.
2. comment_archive_deps comments out references to Kit pip-archive extensions (omni.kit.pip_archive, omni.isaac.core_archive, omni.isaac.ml_archive, omni.pip.compute, omni.pip.cloud, isaacsim.pip.newton) in the generated extension.toml and *.kit files so wheel metadata is self-contained.
3. python_package --wheel builds the .whl files into _build/packages/dist/.

Install locally-built wheels into a Python 3.12 virtual environment:

python3.12 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install _build/packages/dist/*.whl

(Linux aarch64) ⚠️ On aarch64 hosts, X11 development headers are required to build transitive Python dependencies that lack pre-built aarch64 wheels (same note as under Prerequisites and Environment Setup): bash sudo apt-get install -y libx11-dev xorg-dev

Container (Docker)

For building a Docker image, running with Docker Compose, and web-based streaming, see tools/docker/README.md.

Troubleshooting

• Please see the FAQ, Troubleshooting, and Known Issues for common questions, fixes, and workarounds.

• On Linux, if you encounter network connectivity issues when building (such as corporate firewalls), run the following commands:

bash export http_proxy="http://{Your IP address}:7890" export https_proxy="http://{Your IP address}:7890"

• Note: The above command should be used only if you have enabled a proxy software or behind a corporate firewall. Port 7890 should be replaced with the proxy port set by the proxy software.

Support

• Please use GitHub Discussions for discussing ideas, asking questions, and requests for new features.
• Github Issues should only be used to track executable pieces of work with a definite scope and a clear deliverable. These can be fixing bugs, documentation issues, new features, or general updates.

Connect with the NVIDIA Omniverse Community

Have a project or resource you'd like to share more widely? We'd love to hear from you! Reach out to the NVIDIA Omniverse Community team at OmniverseCommunity@nvidia.com to discuss potential opportunities for broader dissemination of your work.

License

Licensing terms can be found in the License File.

Citation

To cite Isaac Sim, click on "Cite this repository" in the right sidebar of the Isaac Sim GitHub repository landing page and select one of the listed citation entries.

Contributing

We do not support direct community contributions at the moment.