Fingertip Tunneling and OmniPVD Debugging Issues in IsaacLab

[Ccarrotr]

Dear developers,

First of all, thank you very much for providing such a powerful and well-supported platform. I am currently working on dexterous manipulation using IsaacLab and OmniPVD in IsaacSim 4.5 on Ubuntu 20.04, with ROS integrated. I have encountered a few issues that I would really appreciate your guidance on.

1. Fingertip Tunneling During Grasping (Dexterous Hand)

I am controlling a dexterous hand using VR-based teleoperation through ROS communication. However, I often observe severe fingertip tunneling, especially when grasping small objects (e.g., a 3 cm diameter cylinder).

Here are the mitigation strategies I’ve tried so far:

• Enabled high-precision collision approximation (convex decomposition),
• Enabled CCD (continuous collision detection),
• Reduced joint velocities of the hand,
• Increased mass and size of the target object,
• Increased contact_offset for both the object and the hand.

Unfortunately, none of these methods improved the situation—while simulation became significantly heavier, the tunneling issue remains unchanged. (See Figure 1 for illustration.)

2. Using OmniPVD for Collision Debugging in IsaacLab + Gym + GUI

Due to the tunneling problem, I turned to OmniPVD for visual debugging. However, I am running into technical issues when using it within IsaacLab's gym environment.

Since IsaacLab automatically starts simulation upon running the script, I cannot manually activate PVD recording via GUI. Therefore, I attempted to launch with kit_args to enable PVD recording automatically:

python src/isaaclab/scripts/file.py \
  --task task_name \
  --enable_cameras \
  --kit_args \
  "--/persistent/physics/omniPvdOvdRecordingDirectory=/tmp/pvd --/physics/omniPvdOutputEnabled=true"

With this setup:

• The PVD panel in GUI shows that recording is enabled, the checkbox is checked.

• However, after executing:

obs_dict, _, _, _, _ = env.step(actions)

the robot joints do not move at all. The simulation time advances as usual, and the main loop continues to run without freezing, but no action is executed.

• No .ovd files are generated in /tmp/pvd.

I've tried several workarounds but haven't found any working solution. Discussions or documentation on this specific setup (IsaacLab + Gym + GUI + OmniPVD) are quite limited.

Request

I would be extremely grateful if you could provide:

• Any suggestions for preventing fingertip tunneling in the context of grasping small objects.

• A verified way to use OmniPVD with IsaacLab's gym environment + GUI, including correct setup for capturing and saving .ovd files during simulation.

Thank you again for your time and for building such an incredible tool.

Best regards,
R