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Configuring the simulation
Before you start running your own experiments there are few details to take into account at the time of configuring your simulation. In this document we cover the most important ones.
For the full list of settings please see CARLA Settings.
Fixed time-step
The time-step is the simulation-time elapsed between two steps of the simulation. In video-games, this simulation-time is almost always adjusted to real time for better realism. This is achieved by having a variable time-step that adjusts the simulation to keep up with real-time. In simulations however, it is better to detach the simulation-time from real- time, and let the simulation run as fast as possible using a fixed time- step. Doing so, we are not only able to simulate longer periods in less time, but also gain repeatability by reducing the float-point arithmetic errors that a variable time-step introduces.
CARLA can be run in both modes.
Variable time-step
The simulation tries to keep up with real-time. To do so, the time-step is slightly adjusted each update. Simulations are not repeatable. By default, the simulator starts in this mode
Fixed time-step
The simulation runs as fast as possible, simulating the same time increment on each step. To run the simulator this way you need to pass two parameters in the command-line, one to enable the fixed time-step mode, and the second to specify the FPS of the simulation (i.e. the inverse of the time step). For instance, to run the simulation at a fixed time-step of 0.2 seconds we execute
$ ./CarlaUE4.sh -benchmark -fps=5
It is important to note that this mode can only be enabled when launching the simulator since this is actually a feature of Unreal Engine.
Synchronous vs Asynchronous mode
The client-simulator communication can be synchronized by using the synchronous mode. The synchronous mode enables two things
- The simulator waits for the sensor data to be ready before sending the measurements.
- The simulator halts each frame until a control message is received.
This is very useful when dealing with slow client applications, as the simulation is halted until the client is ready to continue. This also ensures that the generated data of every sensor is received every frame by the client. As opposed to asynchronous mode, in which the sensor data may arrive a couple of frames later or even be lost if the client is not fast enough.
However, there are a couple of caveats to bear in mind when using the synchronous mode. First of all, it is very important to run the simulator at fixed time-step when using the synchronous mode. Otherwise the physics engine will try to recompute at once all the time spent waiting for the client, this usually results in inconsistent or not very realistic physics.
Secondly, the synchronous mode imposes a significant performance penalty. There is a price in waiting for the render thread to have the images ready and halting the simulation when the client is slow. There is a trade-off in using the synchronous mode.
The synchronous mode can be enabled at the beginning of each episode both in the INI file or the Python API
Python
settings = CarlaSettings()
settings.set(SynchronousMode=True)
CarlaSettings.ini
[CARLA/Server]
SynchronousMode=true