Isaac Sim viewport turns black after a short time (controller initially works, then only black screen)

[host0806]

1. Isaac Sim: 4.2.0
2. OS: Ubuntu 22.04
3. Model: 2× NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 (dual-GPU)

Topic Description

Viewport goes black after a short time; controller works at first, then only black screen.

Detailed Description

We can launch Isaac Sim and spawn my robot. Keyboard/gamepad control works initially, but after a short time (within a few minutes) the main viewport turns completely black. Simulation/timeline and console continue for a while, and sometimes Render Product outputs still work, but the interactive viewport remains black until I restart Isaac Sim.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Launch

2. Load the K1stage and start simulation

Screenshots or Videos

[Simplychenable]

@host0806 i am just another user, but a few inquiries:

1. do you see the same behavior with the latest Isaac Sim release (5.1.0)?
2. which driver version are you on?
3. can you provide the result from NVIDIA-smi?
4. what renderer are you using (Realtime, Pathtracing, etc)?

[host0806]

@Simplychenable

Thanks a lot for the thoughtful follow-up — I really appreciate the help.

Here are the requested details and a concise repro summary (the robot/stage content was built against Isaac Sim 4.2, so tests were performed on 4.2):

Isaac Sim: 4.2.0 (Python App)

NVIDIA driver: 570.195.03 (CUDA 12.8 per nvidia-smi)

1. Renderer used / behavior:

   • RTX Real-Time: main viewport stays black (reproducible).

   • Path Traced: simulation freezes; robot appears in an abnormal lying pose and becomes unresponsive.

     • 

   • No renderer was preset at launch; switching modes leads to the behaviors above.

     • 

2. nvida-smi
   Driver Version: 570.195.03, CUDA: 12.8
   GPU0: GeForce RTX 4090 ~3.9 GiB / 24 GiB (isaac_sim python; Xorg on)
   GPU1: GeForce RTX 4090 ~5.0 GiB / 24 GiB (isaac_sim python; Xorg/GNOME/VSCode present)

   

3. Representative log warnings (near the event)
   [Warning] pxr.OmniGraphSchema is deprecated – use OmniGraphSchema instead
   [Warning] ArticulationView needs to be initialized. (before first reset: None)
   [Warning] omni.usd: material:binding refers to a path outside the scope of the reference (ignored)
   [Warning] omni.hydra: Fisheye equidistant projection is deprecated
   [Warning] omni.timeline: direct use of ITimeline callbacks is deprecated
   (skip) small time command … builtin_interfaces.msg.Time(…)

   

[host0806]

Problem solved. It was a multi gpu problem, switched to a single gpu and solved.

[ademduygu91]

Hi, I have same issue. I use İsaac Sim 5.1.0

GPU: GEFORCE RTX 4060
NVIDIA Studio Driver 581.57
Windows 11

Can you help me?

[host0806]

I’ve just used it, so it might not be accurate.
If you use a multi-GPU and set it to false with isaacsim setting, don’t do that and I recommend you to designate it as “export CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVIES= 1” or “./isaac-sim --active_multi_gpu=false” at the terminal.
And I was in Linux environment and Windows might need more environment to set up.
I don’t know what kind of usd file it is, but I recommend you look first to see if it is compatible with isaacsim 5.1

[ademduygu91]

@host0806

export CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVIES= 1

Thank you for your advices. I followed your instructions and I saw this messages;

[host0806]

export or ./ is a command on Linux. Is your computer environment multi gpu? If so, you should use Windows-appropriate commands, such as set.

[ademduygu91]

Ok I tried and result wasn’t change. I should install 4.2 version.