Saving Physics Cooking Cache to USD for Faster Simulation on Different Machines

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Isaac Sim Version

[*] 4.2.0
4.1.0
4.0.0
2023.1.1
2023.1.0-hotfix.1
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Operating System

[*] Ubuntu 22.04
Ubuntu 20.04
Windows 11
Windows 10
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Topic Description

Detailed Description

I noticed there’s an option to save cooked data to USD. However, I’m wondering what exactly “cooked data” refers to. I played the simulation, stopped it, and saved the USD file. But when I compared the original USDA file and the newly saved USD file, there was no difference.

After running the simulation, a folder named /.cache/ov/Kit/106.0/3a7abd1c/cookedmeshcache is created.

What I want is for the physics cooking cache to be saved in the USD file, so when I send the USD file to another machine and restart the simulation, the simulation will run faster.

Can you help me resolve this issue?

Steps to Reproduce

  1. just click the option “save cooked data to USD”
  2. start simulation, then save the USD file

(Add more steps as needed)

Error Messages

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Additional Information

What I’ve Tried

Related Issues

Additional Context

I will be checking with our team to get more clarity on this feature and how it’s supposed to function. Once I have more information, I’ll make sure to share it here in the forum.

Cooked data is a byte buffer serialized from physX of the necessary data structures for running collision computations used during simulation.

If cooking data exists in the cache it will not make the simulation run faster, but it may eventually take less time to do its first start on a machine that has never run that simulation.

“Save cooked data to USD” option will be ignored if the physics prim to be cooked is sourced from an active Fabric Stage instead of directly USD, and this is probably what you’re experiencing.

We suggest not to rely on this option because it will be deprecated and removed in one of the next releases of Isaac Sim.

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