InfiniteWorld: Separating Visual Evidence from Familiar Physics

Authors: Tong Zhang , Yuxuan Cheng , Yun Peng

View a PDF of the paper titled InfiniteWorld: Separating Visual Evidence from Familiar Physics, by Tong Zhang and 2 other authors

View PDF

HTML (experimental)

Abstract: Physical reasoning requires adapting familiar expectations to the dynamics of the observed world. Existing benchmarks establish broad physical capabilities, yet an overall score leaves unclear whether answers follow visual evidence when familiar rules no longer apply. We introduce InfiniteWorld, a benchmark that pairs physical-reasoning questions with simulator videos whose physical parameters are systematically altered. Its generation pipeline connects simulation, scene screening, paired video translation, question construction, and input checks. Five tasks assess law identification, parameter estimation, temporal reasoning, analytic counterfactual comparison, and law induction. The evaluation defines five matched input settings for each question, comprising text-only evaluation and ordered or shuffled observations from simulator and translated videos. We evaluate a diverse set of video-language models under these matched settings. The results expose a persistent preference for familiar physical rules. Frames improve performance for most models, but gains differ across tasks. Strong accuracy on Earth-normal questions coexists with poor recognition of altered dynamics, and Earth-normal answers remain common when the observed physics changes. Task scores and semantic agreement further distinguish matching physical factors from matching their amount, and correct answers from repeated errors. InfiniteWorld makes these behaviors measurable through paired changes in the evidence supplied for the same question, separating visual evidence from familiar physics.

Subjects:

Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)

Cite as:

arXiv:2610.33777 [cs.AI]

(or

arXiv:2610.33777v1 [cs.AI] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.33777

Focus to learn more

arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

Submission history

From: Yuxuan Cheng [ view email ]

[v1]

Sat, 24 Oct 2026 16:26:19 UTC (3,914 KB)

Full-text links:

Access Paper:

View a PDF of the paper titled InfiniteWorld: Separating Visual Evidence from Familiar Physics, by Tong Zhang and 2 other authors

View PDF

HTML (experimental)

TeX Source

view license

Additional Features

Audio Summary

Current browse context:

cs.AI

< prev

next >

new

recent

| 2026-10

Change to browse by:

cs

References & Citations

SciX

Google Scholar

Semantic Scholar

export BibTeX citation

Loading...

BibTeX formatted citation

loading...

Data provided by:

Bookmark

Bibliographic Tools

Bibliographic and Citation Tools

Bibliographic Explorer Toggle

Bibliographic Explorer ( What is the Explorer? )

Connected Papers Toggle

Connected Papers ( What is Connected Papers? )

Litmaps Toggle

Litmaps ( What is Litmaps? )

scite.ai Toggle

scite Smart Citations ( What are Smart Citations? )

Code, Data, Media

Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article

alphaXiv Toggle

alphaXiv ( What is alphaXiv? )

Links to Code Toggle

CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers ( What is CatalyzeX? )

DagsHub Toggle

DagsHub ( What is DagsHub? )

GotitPub Toggle

Gotit.pub ( What is GotitPub? )

Huggingface Toggle

Hugging Face ( What is Huggingface? )

ScienceCast Toggle

ScienceCast ( What is ScienceCast? )

Demos

Demos

Replicate Toggle

Replicate ( What is Replicate? )

Spaces Toggle

Hugging Face Spaces ( What is Spaces? )

Spaces Toggle

TXYZ.AI ( What is TXYZ.AI? )

Related Papers

Recommenders and Search Tools

Link to Influence Flower

Influence Flower ( What are Influence Flowers? )

Core recommender toggle

CORE Recommender ( What is CORE? )

Author

Venue

Institution

Topic

About arXivLabs

arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs .

Which authors of this paper are endorsers? |

Disable MathJax ( What is MathJax? )