Rtf decreases a lot when there is a difference in elevation in a circuit

[javizqh]

This can be seen in the Monaco circuit, as the RTF drops from 0.7 to 0.1-0.2 when faced with a change in altitude

Screencast.from.2026-01-13.12-12-47.webm

[morty649]

Hi, I noticed the RTF drop on the Monaco circuit when there is a change in elevation (RTF going from 0.7 to 0.1–0.2, as shown in the video).
I’d like to investigate this issue and work on a possible fix (terrain/collision/physics optimization).
Is it okay if I take this up?

[jmplaza]

Sure @morty649 . We do not follow a strict issue allocation/assignment, other contributors may work on it too. The sooner you submit your solving PR the more the chances it can be merged :-)

[javizqh]

The computer I used for the video is using Ubuntu 24.04 with only CPU

[JitinSaxenaa]

Changes I make inside the RoboticsAcademy repo (frontend / exercises) are reflected immediately in my local deployment via docker-compose. However, changes I make in RoboticsInfrastructure (worlds, models, launchers) are not reflected, even though RI exists as a submodule inside RA.

Is the intended workflow for RI changes to use a standalone RoboticsInfrastructure clone and mount it explicitly in docker-compose?
Or is there an official way to develop RI changes through the RA setup itself?

[javizqh]

For that you must generate a custom RADI as stated in the documentation: https://github.com/JdeRobot/RoboticsAcademy/blob/humble-devel/docs/generate_a_radi.md

[morty649]

I came to realise that one cannot reproduce this on macOs since gazebo does support macOs but not to the fullest - gpu acceleration is not to its fullest and even if i try to install gazebo on ubuntu vm there are issues raised at most of the stages. When i tried the same setup it worked on my another laptop with native Ubuntu installed which is easy. But i am unable to make the car move even though i tried different scripts for it. I am a newbie to this field and this really demotivated me into getting into issues and working on them. Is there any other way i can contribute

[javizqh]

The RADI is a docker container. You do not need to install locally gazebo.

If this issue is to complicated feel free to contribute in a simpler one in Robotics Academy

[morty649]

Following up on this from my side:

I dug a bit deeper into the macOS/Apple Silicon setup and found that part of the difficulty was that RADI could fail to build at all due to parallel colcon builds with LTO running under amd64 emulation.

I opened a PR that makes the RADI Docker build architecture-aware on arm64, which allows the full image to build successfully on Apple Silicon. This doesn’t address Gazebo GPU performance or rendering limitations on macOS, but it removes a hard build blocker.

PR: JdeRobot/RoboticsAcademy#3405

[jmplaza]

Hi @morty649,
Gazebo even runs in only-CPU mode, with no GPU support at all. And in addition you can also test on your MacOS computer the RoboticsAcademy exercises that do not use any simulator at all. For instance the Basic Computer vision exercise.

[javizqh]

Following up on this from my side:

I dug a bit deeper into the macOS/Apple Silicon setup and found that part of the difficulty was that RADI could fail to build at all due to parallel colcon builds with LTO running under amd64 emulation.

I opened a PR that makes the RADI Docker build architecture-aware on arm64, which allows the full image to build successfully on Apple Silicon. This doesn’t address Gazebo GPU performance or rendering limitations on macOS, but it removes a hard build blocker.

PR: JdeRobot/RoboticsAcademy#3405

This is not related in any way with this issue.

Please refrain from commenting unrelated stuff and create a new issue for that

[morty649]

The RADI is a docker container. You do not need to install locally gazebo.

If this issue is to complicated feel free to contribute in a simpler one in Robotics Academy

I thought it is good to let you know that i faced this issue and found something relateble. Will not be commenting any irrelevant stuff - ok

[javizqh]

Create a new issue if you want to share, but not in an issue related to a completely different thing. It makes it harder to newconers to know what an issue is about if you comment things unrelated to it.

Everything has its place, an this is the place to talk about how to fix the issue with the reduced RTF when changing elevation in Gazebo Harmonic