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 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.