I wasn’t sure of the best place to post this question, but I am a university student working on a “Digital Twin” drone project for the NVIDIA GTC Golden Ticket Contest.
My local machine (AMD RX 7900 XT) cannot run Isaac Sim due to hardware incompatibility. I have successfully set up the Isaac Sim Launchable on Brev, and it works perfectly.
However, the hourly cost is difficult for a student budget. Are there any compute credits available for students specifically building for the GTC deadline (Feb 15)? No worries if not, just figured I should ask!
Thanks for taking part in the GTC Golden Ticket contest and for sharing what you’re building — the digital twin drone project sounds very cool.
We don’t have a dedicated Brev/Isaac Sim compute credit program for individual Golden Ticket contestants, and we also can’t easily extend one-off credits without opening the door to having to do this for everyone participating in the challenge. That said, the Isaac Sim Launchable rate on Brev is designed to be relatively low for GPU cloud (on the order of about a dollar per hour?), and the overall contest prize package (including hardware and GTC access) is intended to significantly outweigh typical development costs for teams that decide to invest that time.
A few practical suggestions to help keep costs down:
Use shorter, focused cloud sessions (e.g., batch runs, shutting down the machine when you’re not actively testing).
Develop as much as possible locally (Python logic, ROS integration, etc.) and only spin up Brev when you need the full Isaac Sim stack.
If you’re working as part of a team, consider sharing a single Brev environment and time-boxing who uses it when.
We really appreciate you pushing through hardware constraints to participate, and we’re excited to see what you submit for the contest.