From Generation to Simulation: How Far Are World Models from Being True Simulators?
The paper finds world models can stand in for simulators only in narrow interaction and control settings.
The authors assess 200 works from 2018 to June 2026 against eight simulator capabilities. They say current systems still lack formal physical guarantees, structured state feedback, and reproducible long-horizon behavior. State feedback is singled out as the thinnest area: only 6 of 163 implementation papers expose a runtime interface for querying entity states or physical parameters. The paper points to formalized physics, unified action interfaces, stronger feedback, stability, utility-based evaluation, and hybrid methods as next research directions. HF Daily Papers' note
The authors assess 200 works from 2018 to June 2026 against eight simulator capabilities. They say current systems still lack formal physical guarantees, structured state feedback, and reproducible long-horizon behavior. State feedback is singled out as the thinnest area: only 6 of 163 implementation papers expose a runtime interface for querying entity states or physical parameters. The paper points to formalized physics, unified action interfaces, stronger feedback, stability, utility-based evaluation, and hybrid methods as next research directions. HF Daily Papers' note
score 5