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Drift drives NVIDIA Isaac Sim the same way it drives Gazebo and MuJoCo: describe the scene, Drift writes it, boots Isaac Sim, and checks the result. Isaac Sim is the right target when you need RTX-quality rendering, USD assets, or an Omniverse pipeline.
Isaac Sim is GPU-bound in a way Gazebo and MuJoCo are not. Read the requirements below before you start — Drift checks them for you and tells you plainly when a machine can’t hold an Isaac Sim window open.

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Requirements

Datacenter compute cards without RT cores (A100, H100, …) can’t run Isaac’s RTX renderer. Virtual machines and containers without GPU passthrough won’t work either. What Drift can do depends on what it finds on your machine: Don’t have Isaac Sim yet? Ask:
Drift walks you through NVIDIA’s install steps. It never starts the multi-gigabyte install on its own.

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Composing a scene

Drift writes a declarative scene spec next to your other project files, named <name>.isaac.json. The spec is checked before Isaac Sim ever boots — a bad spec is rejected up front and never overwrites a good one. Drift also accepts specs written in Isaac’s own vocabulary, so you can hand-edit the file and ask Drift to reload it.

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Launching and verifying

On a qualifying GPU this opens the interactive Isaac Sim viewer. Drift tracks the process like any other simulator — /ps shows it, /exit cleans it up.
Verification runs headlessly: Drift steps the physics, records a short video, runs a battery of numeric checks (does anything fall through the floor, fly apart, or drift away?), and looks at the frames to confirm the scene matches what you asked for. The verdict says what failed and why. A scene problem is reported as a scene problem; an environment problem (driver, GPU, install) as an environment problem — so you aren’t sent chasing the wrong thing.

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The GPU prompt on smaller cards

On an RTX card under 16 GB, a verification render still helps Drift check its own work, but it competes hard for the GPU. So, once per session, Drift asks:
A “don’t ask again” answer is saved for the current workspace in .drift/settings.json — remove it there if you change your mind. If you skip the render, Drift reports the scene as not visually verified yet rather than pretending it passed.

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Viewing library robots in Isaac Sim

Robots in the Robot Library that ship a USD variant offer View in Isaac Sim from /robots. Pick the robot, choose the USD format, then View in Isaac Sim. Only robots with a USD variant show the option, and USD robots open on their own — the pre-composed demo worlds are MuJoCo-only.

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Next steps

Robot Library

Browse 100+ robots and open the USD ones straight in Isaac Sim

Building a MuJoCo Scene

The fast, GPU-light alternative — and how Drift composes full worlds

System Requirements

GPU, memory, and simulator requirements side by side

Troubleshooting

Isaac Sim not detected, below-floor GPUs, and resource limits