Release notes#

Release history for the SimReady Foundation. Public releases use a major.minor product version. Repository branches and Python distributions prefix that version with the release year, so Foundation 8.0 is published as 2026.08.0 from the release-2026.08.0 branch. This release version is separate from the semantic versions assigned to individual features and profiles. The current repository version is recorded in VERSION.md.

Foundation 8.0 requires the 8.0 releases of the SimReady libraries (simready-validate, simready-benchmark, simready-package, etc.). Foundation 8.0 does not work with older library releases.

The 8.0 SimReady libraries (simready-validate, simready-benchmark, simready-package, etc.) are backward-compatible with earlier Foundation releases, including 6.0 and 7.1.

Use documentation, tier content, and profile versions for the Foundation release you are targeting. When adopting a newer Foundation profile, migrate assets and custom tiers as needed and validate them against that profile; earlier validation results or stamps do not establish conformance to it.

Entries are newest first.

2026.08.0 — September 2026#

Visual materials, sensors, and AI Factory release. Foundation 8.0 adds the OpenPBR and display color material contracts, a Sensors tier covering IMU, joint, camera, and LiDAR sensors, and an AIF tier for AI Factory data center equipment. Asset provenance moves from nested USD metadata to a USD and sidecar union, and the legacy split prop and robot profiles are consolidated into Robotics-Prop, Robot-Body, and Robot-Gripper.

Important

Foundation 8.0 requires the 8.0 releases of the SimReady libraries (simready-validate, simready-benchmark, simready-package, etc.). Foundation 8.0 does not work with older library releases.

The 8.0 SimReady libraries (simready-validate, simready-benchmark, simready-package, etc.) are backward-compatible with earlier Foundation releases, including 6.0 and 7.1.

Foundation 8.0 libraries#

Foundation 8.0 ships as three tier packages, used together with the corresponding 8.0 SimReady tools:

Library

Purpose

simready-foundation-tier-core

The baseline requirements, features, profiles, validators, and bundled runtime tests. Required.

simready-foundation-tier-sensors

Physics sensor, RTX LiDAR, and camera render-product contracts. Add it for sensor-bearing assets.

simready-foundation-tier-aif

AI Factory equipment contracts. Add it for CDU, CRAH, UPS, and compute-rack assets.

simready-validate

Static validation CLI and Python API.

simready-benchmark

Runtime and behavioral testing in Kit or Isaac Sim. Arrives through a tier’s benchmark extra; you do not normally install it directly.

simready-package

Package creation and pre/post validation. Use the publish extra for WRAPP publishing.

The tier wheels for a given Foundation release share one version line, so install the tiers you need in a single command and let pip resolve a matching set rather than pinning them separately:

pip install "simready-foundation-tier-core[benchmark]" simready-validate

Add simready-foundation-tier-sensors or simready-foundation-tier-aif to that same command when the asset needs them. Supporting packages such as usd-validation-nvidia, MaterialX, pillow, usd-core, and numpy are resolved transitively.

The published version of each package is listed on its PyPI project page. Pin exact versions there if your environment requires reproducible installs, and keep the three tier wheels on the same version when you do.

Breaking changes#

  • The split prop and robot profiles are removed in favor of the consolidated profiles. Re-stamp affected assets and validate again; a stamp naming a removed profile no longer resolves. The runtime-specific behavior these profiles carried is now selected through optional PhysX, Newton, MuJoCo, and Isaac feature bundles on the consolidated profile versions, rather than by choosing a separate profile.

  • A UsdPreviewSurface material is now mandatory on the 8.0 profile versions. FET_006_STANDARD was optional through Robotics-Prop@3.3.0; at Robotics-Prop@4.0.0, Robot-Body@3.0.0, and Robot-Gripper@3.0.0 it is required, at version 0.2.0. An asset that passes the previous profile version without a UsdPreviewSurface material will fail the 8.0 version. Author one, or pin the earlier profile version. OpenPBR, MDL, and display color remain optional alongside it.

  • FET_000_STANDARD@0.2.0 drops NP.006 (conformance metadata location) and SR.001 (SimReady metadata whitelist) from the Core feature. Both moved to the packaging and metadata features. Custom-tier owners who relied on Core to supply them must add FET_031_STANDARD and FET_033_STANDARD to the affected profile versions in their profile TOML. Asset authors are not affected as long as they use an 8.0 profile version, which pins both.

Profile migration map:

Removed profile

Use instead

Prop-Robotics-Neutral, Prop-Robotics-Physx, Prop-Robotics-Isaac

Robotics-Prop

Robot-Body-Neutral, Robot-Body-Isaac, Robot-Body-Runnable

Robot-Body

Added#

Tier distribution#

  • simready-foundation-tier-sensors, a Sensors tier owning the physics sensor, RTX LiDAR, and render-product capabilities, their four profiles, validators, and bundled runtime tests.

  • simready-foundation-tier-aif, an AI Factory tier owning equipment class metadata, connection points, thermal cooling, and electrical contracts for CDU, CRAH, UPS, and compute-rack assets.

  • Shared tier documentation covering the Core, AIF, and Sensors tiers (shared/tiers/).

Visual materials#

  • FET_006_OPENPBR@0.1.0: the OpenPBR material contract, with the final surface authored as an OpenPBR shading network on outputs:mtlx:surface (VM.PBR.001–VM.PBR.003, VM.TEX.004). OpenPBR is the recommended target for new SimReady assets; MDL remains permitted for existing content. VM.PBR.001 is phased-permissive, so an MDL surface still passes during migration.

  • FET_006_STANDARD@0.2.0 and FET_006_MDL@0.2.0: expanded UsdPreviewSurface and MDL contracts covering bind scope, final-surface presence, PBR parameter ranges, and per-family texture color space.

  • FET_010_STANDARD@0.1.0: display color on renderable geometry (DISP.001–DISP.003), with a new Display Color capability and validator.

  • Guide: Visual Materials (guides/visual_materials/visual_materials.md), covering OpenPBR and display color authoring, validation, and rendering.

Sensors#

  • FET_034_ISAAC@0.1.0 (IMU sensor rigid-body attachment, PS.001) and FET_037_ISAAC@0.1.0 (joint sensor on the articulation root, PS.002).

  • FET_035_RTX@0.1.0: camera render products and AOVs (RP.001–RP.006), including codec validation and BLOSC compression for semantic AOVs.

  • FET_036_RTX@0.1.0: RTX LiDAR (LI.001–LI.004), covering the OmniLidar schema, emitter-state array consistency, the scan-rate floor, and solid-state ray counts.

  • Four sensor profiles at 1.0.0 — Sensor-IMU, Sensor-Joint, Sensor-Camera, and Sensor-LiDAR — each stamped alongside an asset’s primary profile, with authoring guides.

  • Runtime tests: imu_sensor_data, joint_sensor_data, render_product_output, semantic_aov_output, and lidar_point_cloud.

AI Factory equipment#

  • FET200_AIF (equipment metadata, AM.001–AM.007), FET201_AIF (connection points), FET202_AIF (thermal cooling), and FET203_AIF (electrical), with FET201–FET203 at both 0.1.0 and 0.2.0.

  • AIF-Entity profile at 0.1.0 and 0.2.0. A single profile covers all equipment classes; aif:core:assetClass selects the class-specific checks.

  • Reference assets for four equipment classes under sample_content/aif/.

Metadata and packaging#

  • SR.004: provenance read from the union of root-layer customLayerData and an optional same-directory <usd_stem>.json sidecar, delivered as FET_033_STANDARD@0.4.0. A field must not be authored in both locations.

  • Package-Candidate@1.3.0 adopts FET_033_STANDARD@0.4.0.

Profiles#

  • 8.0 releases of the consolidated profiles: Robotics-Prop@4.0.0, Robot-Body@3.0.0, and Robot-Gripper@3.0.0, each requiring FET_006_STANDARD@0.2.0 with optional OpenPBR, MDL, and display color.

  • Intermediate versions Robotics-Prop@3.3.0, Robot-Body@2.3.0, and Robot-Gripper@2.2.0 adopt FET_033_STANDARD@0.4.0.

  • Robot-Body@2.3.0 and @3.0.0 offer the full optional runtime menu for all three solvers — core scaffolding, rigid body, multibody, driven joints, and articulation for PhysX, Newton, and MuJoCo — rather than PhysX alone.

Conformance skills#

  • simready-foundation-conform-fet-006-openpbr and simready-foundation-conform-fet-010-standard.

Changed#

  • The reference prop library is re-authored to payload-based composition, with per-solver instance layers and refreshed light, dark, and transparent thumbnails.

  • Geometry and units validators delegate to usd-validation-nvidia rather than duplicating the checks locally. The affected requirements are now referenced through their com.nvidia.usd.* names.

  • The monolithic texture color-space requirement is replaced by per-family requirements for UsdPreviewSurface, OpenPBR, and MDL (VM.TEX.003–VM.TEX.005).

  • Built-in Kit MDL modules such as OmniPBR are exempt from the rule requiring MDL sources to be packaged with the asset, matching Isaac asset transformer behavior.

Deprecated#

NONE

Removed#

  • The six split prop and robot profiles listed under Breaking changes.

  • The atomic_asset executable validator. Its requirements are now checked by usd-validation-nvidia; the capability documentation remains.

  • Per-asset metadata.json sidecars and web/*.glb exports from the migrated reference props, replaced by the USD-native provenance and thumbnail layout.

Fixed#

  • Physics drop placement is size-safe for the FET_003 ground and slope drop runtime tests.

  • Cross-engine runtime-test reliability for gripper, articulation, and placement tests.

  • Stale Isaac references removed from the sample manifest.

  • Material and thumbnail fixes for the lamp and workbench tool props.

  • The sensor runtime tests ship with the Sensors tier (OMPE-112896), and their execution was corrected (OMPE-113171, OMPE-113178, OMPE-113181).

  • FET_005 grasp setup now resolves rigid bodies outside identifier scopes, and Newton failure reporting is corrected.

  • Generated artifacts and unreferenced DCC source assets are excluded from the released package.

2026.07.1 — August 2026#

Tiered distribution and multiphysics release. The specification is now distributed as installable tier packages, so simready-validate discovers requirements, features, and profiles from installed wheels instead of filesystem paths. One SimReady prop can carry isolated PhysX, Newton, and MuJoCo physics payloads through USD runtime variants, with matching features, validators, samples, and authoring docs. This release supersedes 2026.07.0, which was not shipped; its content is included here.

Important

Foundation 7.1 is not backward-compatible with earlier Foundation major or minor releases. Do not mix 7.1 requirements, features, profiles, or tier packages with content from 7.0 or earlier. Existing assets and custom tiers must be migrated as needed and revalidated against a 7.1 profile; validation results or stamps from an older Foundation release do not establish 7.1 conformance.

Foundation 7.1 libraries#

Use the following independently versioned libraries with Foundation 7.1:

Library

Compatible version

Purpose

simready-foundation-tier-core

2026.7.1

Foundation 7.1 requirements, features, profiles, validators, and bundled runtime tests.

simready-validate

>=2026.7.0.dev1

Static validation CLI and Python API.

simready-benchmark[kit]

>=2026.6.6

Runtime and behavioral testing in Kit or Isaac Sim; installed by the core tier’s benchmark extra.

simready-package

>=2026.6.0a1

Package creation and pre/post validation; use the publish extra for WRAPP publishing.

For a complete validation and Benchmark environment:

pip install "simready-foundation-tier-core[benchmark]==2026.7.1" "simready-validate>=2026.7.0.dev1"

Add simready-package>=2026.6.0a1 for packaging, or simready-package[publish]>=2026.6.0a1 when WRAPP publishing is required. Supporting packages such as usd-validation-nvidia>=1.20.0, usd-core>=23.5, and numpy are resolved transitively.

Breaking changes#

  • simready-foundation-tier-isaac is no longer published. Its Isaac Sim capabilities, features, and profiles are now part of simready-foundation-tier-core. Run pip uninstall simready-foundation-tier-isaac before upgrading: leaving both in one environment registers the Isaac requirement IDs twice.

  • Foundation runtime tests now ship inside simready-foundation-tier-core rather than as standalone distributions. Uninstall simready-benchmark-kit-suite and simready-foundation-runtime-tests-kit before upgrading an existing Benchmark environment; both can own files in the same top-level package now bundled by the core tier.

Added#

Tiered distribution#

  • Tier packaging: the specification ships as simready-foundation-tier-core, a Python package owning the Core, Hierarchy, Visualization, Physics Bodies, Isaac Sim, Non-Visual Sensors, Semantic Labels, Dataset Taxonomies, and Packaging capabilities along with their profiles.

  • Tier discovery through the usd_validation_nvidia and simready.tier entry points, so simready-validate loads content from installed wheels. The --rules-path, --features-path, and --profiles-path flags are no longer needed once a tier is installed.

  • Benchmark runtime tests bundled with their owning tier and advertised through runtime_tests_path on the tier descriptor, so tests and specification catalogs cannot drift. Validator-only installs stay lightweight; the [benchmark] extra installs the Benchmark engine dependencies.

  • Guide: SimReady Foundation Tiers (guides/tiers.md), plus tier ownership surfaced across the capability, feature, and profile documentation.

Multiple physics solvers (runtime variants)#

  • Runtime Variants capability (RV.001–RV.011): per-runtime variant sets, payload locations under runnables/physics/, variant metadata, section purity, and composed-stage isolation.

  • Runtime Physics Isolation Matrix documenting allow / forbid policy per selected solver (PhysX, Newton, MuJoCo, or neutral).

  • Core runtime scaffolding features: FET_000_PHYSX, FET_000_NEWTON, FET_000_MUJOCO.

  • Rigid-body and multibody runtime features: FET_003_* / FET_004_* for PhysX, Newton, and MuJoCo, including Newton collider, mass, material, and drive schemas.

  • Optional runtime-variant feature bundles on Robotics-Prop@3.1.0 and Prop-Robotics-Physx@2.2.0 (and related neutral/physx profile versions).

  • Feature runtime field so simready-validate enables the matching physics variant before checking solver-specific rules.

  • Reference samples with PhysX + Newton + MuJoCo payloads: obs_orange_a02 (unibody) and obs_electricians_large_tool_box_a01 (multibody).

  • Guide: Multiple Physics Solvers (guides/multiphysics_solvers.md).

Semantic labels and dataset taxonomies#

  • Semantic Labels capability (SL.001–SL.003, MAT.001, TIME.001) in the core tier, covering label schema, material labels, and time-sampled labels.

  • Dataset Taxonomies capability with validators for the ADE20K, Cityscapes, COCO, SUN RGB-D, and Pascal VOC taxonomies (ADE.001, CITY.001, COCO.001, SUN.001, VOC.001).

  • Sample assets updated to comply with the Semantic Labels specification.

Robotics#

  • FET_025_ROS (ROS-Ready): Isaac ROS bridge-node presence for robot assets, offered as an optional feature on Robot-Body@2.2.0.

  • Standalone Isaac asset transformer, plus Isaac composition features.

  • Complete FET022 driven-joint runtime testing on Newton.

  • Restored the FET_028 gripper stack that was dropped during the foundations 1.1 sync.

Metadata#

  • SR.003 nested provenance metadata extended with asset_license, qcode (Wikidata Q-Code), rigid_body_count, asset_extents (float3 meters, XYZ), and mass (kilograms), delivered as FET_033_STANDARD@0.3.0 and bundled into the robot and prop profiles.

Changed#

  • Prop physics authoring guides document optional runtime variant scaffolding and per-solver payload expectations.

  • Neutral base authoring guidance tightened so solver-only values (for example PhysX SDF approximation) stay inside runtime payloads.

  • Recombined the separate validation tiers into the single core tier.

  • Prop profiles updated to reference the new feature set.

  • Benchmark reference documentation aligned with the registered runtime tests.

  • Fixed KitMaker publishing and added the tier-core project ID.

Deprecated#

NONE

Removed#

  • simready-foundation-tier-isaac, superseded by simready-foundation-tier-core.

  • The standalone simready-benchmark-kit-suite and simready-foundation-runtime-tests-kit distributions, replaced by the runtime tests bundled with the core tier.

Fixed#

  • NP.008 false positives on UDIM texture paths, and UDIM path handling in the core validators (OMPE-104937).

  • Driven-joint validators for prismatic PhysX mimic couplings.

  • RB.011 tier validation logic.

  • Registered the dataset_taxonomies validators in the core tier.

  • Docs build now completes with all Sphinx warnings cleared.

  • Sample-content validation isolated into two branch passes and now fails on logged errors (OMPE-103628).

  • GitLab security builds and CI jobs.

2026.06.0 — June 2026#

The runtime, packaging, and robotics content release. Adds a behavioral benchmark test suite, formal asset packaging standards, robot runtime coverage, and a large set of spec, profile, and validator refinements on top of the 2026.04.x packaging milestone.

Added#

Runtime testing & benchmark suite#

  • SimReady benchmark kit suite (simready-benchmark-kit-suite), a built-in runtime test suite that provides behavioral proof for features beyond static validators.

  • Faithful runtime robot tests: closed-loop joints, IK solver, and gravity-on articulation behavior.

  • Per-test reference docset for the runtime testing guides.

  • Published simready-benchmark library documentation.

  • batch_maker now consumes the simready_search PyPI package for job generation.

Asset packaging#

  • Asset Packaging Standards implementation and packaging capability.

  • simready-package sample workflow, with a thumbnail-presence check added to the package sample.

  • Published SimReady package library documentation and packaging workflow doc, incorporating product review feedback.

Features & requirements#

  • FET028 gripper runtime test pack (close, lift, shake, drop). The non-functional close-lift variant was dropped before release.

  • FET022 joint-rooted articulation support, spec-canonical discovery, and more actionable diagnostics.

  • optional tag support for multibody features in prop-specific profiles, so single-rigid-body props are not failed on multibody requirements.

  • com.nvidia.simready metadata namespace.

  • VM.TEX.002 material-texture color-space requirement (albedo color space).

Documentation & governance#

  • Onboarding, acceptance, and development workflow guides.

  • Spec scorecard restructure with reworked workflows, tables, and validation links, plus prioritized stories and governance docs.

  • GitHub docs URL wired into project_config.toml.

Changed#

  • Split the aggregate profiles.toml into nine per-profile TOML files under profiles/.

  • Renamed the kit test suite module/dist to simready-benchmark-kit-suite.

  • Updated the sample package to consume simready-package, following asset-validator and usd-profiles package updates.

  • Updated USD asset validator dependencies; added a numpy requirement, requirements.txt, and venv setup instructions.

  • Added SimReady Foundation entrypoint plugin support to the Asset Validator.

  • Added a sample_content validation test job to the CI pipeline.

  • Fixed capability requirement enum ownership.

Fixed#

  • NP.003/NP.005 naming/path conflict resolved and folder-layout enforcement corrected (bug 6243124).

  • HI.001 root-count check now excludes the Omniverse /Render scope.

  • Sub-threshold pivot offsets now report as SKIPPED rather than an advisory warning.

  • physx_to_isaacsim: fixed textures-folder casing mismatch in USD references.

  • Fixed duplicate collider produced after the Isaac transform.

  • UR10 profile and validation fixes; asset transformer update.

  • Security hardening: removed benign local-path references and applied additional security fixes.

Removed#

  • Deprecated requirement RB.006.

  • Removed the generated config.json from source control.

2026.04.1 — May 2026#

Patch release on top of 2026.04.0.

Added#

  • Bundled conformance and authoring skills.

Changed#

  • UR10 profile fixes.

Removed#

  • Removed in-progress testing docs that were not ready to ship.

2026.04.0 — April 2026#

The distribution milestone: SimReady validation became installable and runnable outside the docs repository, as both a Python package and a Kit extension.

Added#

  • simready-validate Python package with a python -m simready.validate CLI entry point.

  • Public PyPI wheel publishing via KitMaker (deploy-python-public), delivering the custom omni.capabilities / simready.validate.requirements alongside the package.

  • SimReady Foundations Validators Kit extension.

  • Initial robot specifications and related content developed from Isaac.

  • Onboarding documentation and simready-validate usage guidance.

Changed#

  • Cleanup of package dependencies and rules.

  • Feature generation fixed for automatic codegen.

  • Updated search library usage.

  • Added SonarQube exclusions.

Fixed#

  • Guarded all PhysxSchema usages against None.

  • Fixed import regressions causing ModuleNotFoundError in PyPI-only environments.

  • Fixed inherited material binding on an xform affecting thumbnail lighting rigs.