SimVTASimulation-Grounded Video-Trajectory Alignment
for Driving World Action Models

1 Shanghai Innovation Institute2 OpenDriveLab at The University of Hong Kong3 Li Auto Inc.4 Tongji University5 Tsinghua University

† Project Lead   ·   ‡ Correspondence Author

From logged futures to candidate-matched supervision

Comparison of logged-future pretraining, trajectory GRPO, and SimVTA with matched simulation supervision

Abstract

Driving world action models (WAMs) learn from paired trajectories and future observations. Post-training with reinforcement learning allows the policy to explore alternative trajectories and improve planning using driving rewards. However, driving logs contain future videos only for the recorded trajectories, leaving these alternatives without corresponding visual supervision. Thus, we introduce SimVTA, a simulation-grounded post-training framework that combines trajectory optimization with video supervision. First, we sample candidate trajectories for each observation and use a real-world simulator (e.g., World Engine) to render future videos for high-reward candidates in real-world scenes reconstructed with 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS). This provides trajectory-matched supervision independent of the model's own predictions. Under a limited rendering budget, we prioritize video supervision for higher-error futures among these rendered candidates. Finally, we optimize trajectory planning with Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) and use a flow-matching loss on the matched videos to update shared representations. At inference time, the model predicts trajectories directly, without simulator calls. On NAVSIM v1, applying SimVTA to a WAM initialization improves PDMS from 86.2 to 91.3 (+5.1). It achieves 88.2 EPDMS on NAVSIM v2 and an average HD-Score of 38.8 in closed-loop evaluation on HUGSIM. Ablations show that updating shared representations with video supervision improves planning, while prioritizing higher-error futures among high-reward trajectories further improves performance.

Action-Matched Futures

Simulator-rendered futures for going straight, changing lanes left, and changing lanes right

Leaderboard Results

Higher is better. HUGSIM: E/M/H/X = easy/medium/hard/extreme; HD = HD-Score.

NAVSIM v1 · NavTest

MethodNC ↑DAC ↑TTC ↑Comfort ↑EP ↑PDMS ↑
Traditional E2E planners
UniAD97.891.992.9100.078.883.4
DiffusionDrive98.296.294.7100.082.288.1
WoTE98.596.894.999.981.988.3
MeanFuser + BeyondDrive98.598.495.1100.084.290.3
ResAD98.997.894.9100.087.090.6
VLM-based planners
AutoVLA98.495.698.099.981.989.1
Uni-World VLA98.796.796.1100.083.289.4
ExploreVLA98.898.496.599.983.590.4
ReCogDrive97.997.394.9100.087.390.8
SGDrive98.697.896.2100.085.891.1
World-model-based planners
LAW96.495.488.799.981.784.6
Epona97.895.093.999.980.386.2
PWM98.695.995.4100.081.888.1
DreamerAD98.097.294.3100.083.188.7
DriveWAM98.398.195.2100.084.390.1
DriveVA99.297.598.7100.083.590.9
SimVTA98.097.297.0100.086.791.3

NAVSIM v2 · NavTest

MethodNC ↑DAC ↑DDC ↑TLC ↑EP ↑TTC ↑LK ↑HC ↑EC ↑EPDMS ↑
Traditional E2E planners
ResAD97.897.299.599.888.296.997.098.488.285.5
DriveSuprim98.498.699.699.890.597.897.098.378.687.1
DiffRefiner98.698.599.799.987.698.198.198.387.987.4
VLM-based planners
SGDrive98.694.399.599.986.097.996.198.385.986.2
DriveWorld-VLA98.699.199.699.887.497.997.097.878.686.8
ELF-VLA-8B98.998.199.499.888.598.496.998.387.287.1
World-model-based planners
Epona97.295.699.399.788.496.496.997.967.685.0
SafeDrive99.599.099.799.988.698.997.598.281.987.5
DreamerAD98.097.299.599.887.897.497.598.372.487.7
SimVTA98.598.599.899.090.898.597.599.060.088.2

HUGSIM · Closed-loop planning

MethodRC · ERC · MRC · HRC · XRC · Avg.HD · EHD · MHD · HHD · XHD · Avg.
VAD51.331.125.326.531.436.39.58.011.513.4
LTF67.835.126.240.538.958.918.09.825.923.7
UniAD78.460.533.617.845.964.945.820.66.632.7
DrivoR80.950.533.847.149.873.334.618.832.535.7
SimVTA78.857.638.340.151.569.945.023.327.238.8

Pipeline and Visualization

SimVTA training pipeline: sample trajectories, render executed paths, select high-reward high-error targets, and optimize trajectory and video losses

Video-trajectory alignment

Bird’s-eye view of the shared executed trajectory

HUGSIM · Closed-loop driving

Ecosystem

Please stay tuned for more work from OpenDriveLab: WorldEngine, PlannerRFT, R2SE, ReSim, NEXUS, MTGS, Centaur, ViRA.

BibTeX

If you find this work useful, please consider citing our paper.

@misc{jing2026simvta,
  title={SimVTA: Simulation-Grounded Video-Trajectory Alignment for Driving World Action Models},
  author={Changhui Jing and Haochen Tian and Hongchen Li and Tianyu Li and Caojun Wang and Zihao Zhang and Yanhao Liu and Chengen Xie and Bailin Li and Hao Zhao and Zhenjie Yang},
  year={2026},
  howpublished={Preprint}
}