World Models

February 15, 2026 · View on GitHub

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World Models

200+ papers · 6 sub-domains · 6 theory themes

Learning internal representations of how the world works — from game simulation to autonomous driving and embodied AI


Sub-domains

Sub-domainFocusKey Models
Theory & SurveysTheoretical foundations, surveys, scaling laws20+ surveys
Game SimulationInteractive game engines, virtual worldsGameNGen, DIAMOND, Oasis
Video GenerationVideo generation as world simulationSora, Cosmos, Genie
LiDAR GenerationLiDAR point cloud world modelsLiDAR-based driving models
Occupancy Generation3D occupancy prediction and generationOccWorld, occupancy models
Embodied AIManipulation, navigation, locomotion, MBRLTesserAct, DreamGen, Dreamer v4

Foundation World Models

ModelTitleRepresentationYear
Genie 3A new frontier for world modelsInteractive Video2025
V-JEPA 2Self-Supervised Video Models Enable Understanding, Prediction and PlanningLatent (JEPA)2025
Cosmos 2.5Evolving the World Foundation Models for Physical AIVideo Generation2025
PANA World Model for General, Interactable, Long-Horizon SimulationInteractive2025
SoraVideo generation models as world simulatorsVideo Generation2024
Genie 2A Large-Scale Foundation World ModelInteractive Video2024
CosmosCosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AIVideo Generation2024
UniSimLearning Interactive Real-World SimulatorsInteractive2023
PandoraGeneral World Model with Natural Language Actions and Video StatesInteractive2024

Game Simulation

ModelTitleSpace
GameNGenDiffusion Models Are Real-Time Game EnginesPixel
MineWorldReal-Time Interactive World Model on MinecraftPixel
DIAMONDDiffusion for World Modeling: Visual Details Matter in AtariPixel
Matrix-Game 2.0Open-Source Real-Time Streaming Interactive World ModelPixel
OasisA Universe in a TransformerPixel
HunyuanWorld 1.0Generating Immersive Explorable Interactive 3D Worlds3D Mesh
Matrix-3DOmnidirectional Explorable 3D World Generation3D Mesh

Autonomous Driving

ModelTitle
Cosmos-Drive-DreamsScalable Synthetic Driving Data with World Foundation Models
GAIA-2A Controllable Multi-View Generative World Model for Driving
VistaGeneralizable Driving World Model with High Fidelity
DrivingWorldConstructing World Model for Driving via Video GPT
OccWorldLearning a 3D Occupancy World Model for Driving
Drive-WMMultiview Visual Forecasting and Planning with World Model

Embodied AI

ModelTitleDomain
TesserActLearning 4D Embodied World ModelsFoundation
DreamGenUnlocking Generalization via Video World ModelsFoundation
iVideoGPTInteractive VideoGPTs are Scalable World ModelsFoundation
AgiBot-WorldLarge-scale Manipulation Platform for Embodied SystemsManipulation
NWMNavigation World ModelsNavigation
DWLAdvancing Humanoid Locomotion with World Model LearningLocomotion

World Models x VLAs & Model-Based RL

ModelTitleFocus
CoT-VLAVisual Chain-of-Thought for Vision-Language-Action ModelsVLA
WorldVLATowards Autoregressive Action World ModelVLA
Dreamer v4Training Agents Inside of Scalable World ModelsMBRL
Dreamer v3Mastering Diverse Domains through World ModelsMBRL
TD-MPC2Scalable, Robust World Models for Continuous ControlMBRL
DINO-WMWorld Models on Pre-trained Visual Features for Zero-shot PlanningLatent

Theory & Position Papers

TitleKey Contribution
General agents contain world modelsTheoretical framework for world representation emergence
When Do Neural Networks Learn World Models?Conditions under which networks develop world models
Transformers Use Causal World Models in Maze-SolvingEvidence of causal reasoning in next-token prediction
Video as the New Language for Real-World Decision MakingVideo as universal reasoning substrate
Scaling Laws for Pre-training Agents and World ModelsCompute-optimal training strategies

Surveys

TitleDomainYear
Is Sora a World Simulator?General2024
A Comprehensive Survey on World Models for Embodied AIEmbodied2024
A Survey of World Models for Autonomous DrivingDriving2024
3D and 4D World Modeling: A Survey3D/4D2024
World Models: The Safety PerspectiveSafety2024

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