Towards World Simulator: Crafting Physical Commonsense-Based Benchmark for Video Generation

Fanqing Meng, Jiaqi Liao, Xinyu Tan, Quanfeng Lu, Wenqi Shao, Kaipeng Zhang, Yu Cheng, Dianqi Li, Ping Luo
Proceedings of the 42nd International Conference on Machine Learning, PMLR 267:43781-43806, 2025.

Abstract

Text-to-video (T2V) models like Sora have made significant strides in visualizing complex prompts, which is increasingly viewed as a promising path towards constructing the universal world simulator. Cognitive psychologists believe that the foundation for achieving this goal is the ability to understand intuitive physics. However, the capacity of these models to accurately represent intuitive physics remains largely unexplored. To bridge this gap, we introduce PhyGenBench, a comprehensive Physics Generation Benchmark designed to evaluate physical commonsense correctness in T2V generation. PhyGenBench comprises 160 carefully crafted prompts across 27 distinct physical laws, spanning four fundamental domains, which could comprehensively assesses models’ understanding of physical commonsense. Alongside PhyGenBench, we propose a novel evaluation framework called PhyGenEval. This framework employs a hierarchical evaluation structure utilizing appropriate advanced vision-language models and large language models to assess physical commonsense. Through PhyGenBench and PhyGenEval, we can conduct large-scale automated assessments of T2V models’ understanding of physical commonsense, which align closely with human feedback. Our evaluation results and in-depth analysis demonstrate that current models struggle to generate videos that comply with physical commonsense. Moreover, simply scaling up models or employing prompt engineering techniques is insufficient to fully address the challenges presented by PhyGenBench (e.g., dynamic scenarios). We hope this study will inspire the community to prioritize the learning of physical commonsense in these models beyond entertainment applications. We will release the data and codes at https://github.com/OpenGVLab/PhyGenBench

Cite this Paper

BibTeX
@InProceedings{pmlr-v267-meng25c, title = {Towards World Simulator: Crafting Physical Commonsense-Based Benchmark for Video Generation}, author = {Meng, Fanqing and Liao, Jiaqi and Tan, Xinyu and Lu, Quanfeng and Shao, Wenqi and Zhang, Kaipeng and Cheng, Yu and Li, Dianqi and Luo, Ping}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 42nd International Conference on Machine Learning}, pages = {43781--43806}, year = {2025}, editor = {Singh, Aarti and Fazel, Maryam and Hsu, Daniel and Lacoste-Julien, Simon and Berkenkamp, Felix and Maharaj, Tegan and Wagstaff, Kiri and Zhu, Jerry}, volume = {267}, series = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research}, month = {13--19 Jul}, publisher = {PMLR}, pdf = {https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mlresearch/v267/main/assets/meng25c/meng25c.pdf}, url = {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v267/meng25c.html}, abstract = {Text-to-video (T2V) models like Sora have made significant strides in visualizing complex prompts, which is increasingly viewed as a promising path towards constructing the universal world simulator. Cognitive psychologists believe that the foundation for achieving this goal is the ability to understand intuitive physics. However, the capacity of these models to accurately represent intuitive physics remains largely unexplored. To bridge this gap, we introduce PhyGenBench, a comprehensive Physics Generation Benchmark designed to evaluate physical commonsense correctness in T2V generation. PhyGenBench comprises 160 carefully crafted prompts across 27 distinct physical laws, spanning four fundamental domains, which could comprehensively assesses models’ understanding of physical commonsense. Alongside PhyGenBench, we propose a novel evaluation framework called PhyGenEval. This framework employs a hierarchical evaluation structure utilizing appropriate advanced vision-language models and large language models to assess physical commonsense. Through PhyGenBench and PhyGenEval, we can conduct large-scale automated assessments of T2V models’ understanding of physical commonsense, which align closely with human feedback. Our evaluation results and in-depth analysis demonstrate that current models struggle to generate videos that comply with physical commonsense. Moreover, simply scaling up models or employing prompt engineering techniques is insufficient to fully address the challenges presented by PhyGenBench (e.g., dynamic scenarios). We hope this study will inspire the community to prioritize the learning of physical commonsense in these models beyond entertainment applications. We will release the data and codes at https://github.com/OpenGVLab/PhyGenBench} }
Endnote
%0 Conference Paper %T Towards World Simulator: Crafting Physical Commonsense-Based Benchmark for Video Generation %A Fanqing Meng %A Jiaqi Liao %A Xinyu Tan %A Quanfeng Lu %A Wenqi Shao %A Kaipeng Zhang %A Yu Cheng %A Dianqi Li %A Ping Luo %B Proceedings of the 42nd International Conference on Machine Learning %C Proceedings of Machine Learning Research %D 2025 %E Aarti Singh %E Maryam Fazel %E Daniel Hsu %E Simon Lacoste-Julien %E Felix Berkenkamp %E Tegan Maharaj %E Kiri Wagstaff %E Jerry Zhu %F pmlr-v267-meng25c %I PMLR %P 43781--43806 %U https://proceedings.mlr.press/v267/meng25c.html %V 267 %X Text-to-video (T2V) models like Sora have made significant strides in visualizing complex prompts, which is increasingly viewed as a promising path towards constructing the universal world simulator. Cognitive psychologists believe that the foundation for achieving this goal is the ability to understand intuitive physics. However, the capacity of these models to accurately represent intuitive physics remains largely unexplored. To bridge this gap, we introduce PhyGenBench, a comprehensive Physics Generation Benchmark designed to evaluate physical commonsense correctness in T2V generation. PhyGenBench comprises 160 carefully crafted prompts across 27 distinct physical laws, spanning four fundamental domains, which could comprehensively assesses models’ understanding of physical commonsense. Alongside PhyGenBench, we propose a novel evaluation framework called PhyGenEval. This framework employs a hierarchical evaluation structure utilizing appropriate advanced vision-language models and large language models to assess physical commonsense. Through PhyGenBench and PhyGenEval, we can conduct large-scale automated assessments of T2V models’ understanding of physical commonsense, which align closely with human feedback. Our evaluation results and in-depth analysis demonstrate that current models struggle to generate videos that comply with physical commonsense. Moreover, simply scaling up models or employing prompt engineering techniques is insufficient to fully address the challenges presented by PhyGenBench (e.g., dynamic scenarios). We hope this study will inspire the community to prioritize the learning of physical commonsense in these models beyond entertainment applications. We will release the data and codes at https://github.com/OpenGVLab/PhyGenBench
APA
Meng, F., Liao, J., Tan, X., Lu, Q., Shao, W., Zhang, K., Cheng, Y., Li, D. & Luo, P.. (2025). Towards World Simulator: Crafting Physical Commonsense-Based Benchmark for Video Generation. Proceedings of the 42nd International Conference on Machine Learning, in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 267:43781-43806 Available from https://proceedings.mlr.press/v267/meng25c.html.

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