Installation & Setup

This guide covers the installation of NVIDIA Omniverse applications on Windows and Ubuntu (for headless setups), as well as configuring the “Hybrid” workflow connecting WSL to Windows.

Windows Setup (Visualization)

This guide covers the installation of NVIDIA Omniverse applications on Windows using the Kit App Template. This is the modern, developer-centric approach replacing the deprecated Omniverse Launcher.

Prerequisites

  • OS: Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit)

  • GPU: NVIDIA RTX GPU (RTX 3070 or higher recommended)

  • Driver: NVIDIA Studio Driver >=591.44 (Verified 2026-01-02)

    Warning

    Laptop Users (RTX 5080 etc.): Avoid Game Ready Driver 591.59. It is known to cause conflicts with Intel integrated graphics. Use the NVIDIA App to install the Studio Driver (591.44+) instead.

  • Tools: * Git * Visual Studio 2019 or 2022 (with “Desktop development with C++” workload)

Installation Steps

1. Configure Environment

Before cloning, set up the Packman dependency cache to avoid long download times and path issues.

  1. Open PowerShell as Administrator.

  2. Set the PM_PACKAGES_ROOT environment variable to a local path (e.g., C:\packman-repo):

    setx PM_PACKAGES_ROOT "C:\packman-repo"

  3. Close and reopen PowerShell to apply the change.

2. Clone the Kit App Template

Clone the official template repository to a local drive (e.g., C:\Projects). Do not clone into a network share or WSL mount.

cd C:\Projects
git clone https://github.com/NVIDIA-Omniverse/kit-app-template.git
cd kit-app-template

Ubuntu Setup (Headless Simulation)

This guide covers setting up NVIDIA Omniverse in a Docker container on Ubuntu. This is useful for headless simulation, CI/CD, or running on a Linux server (e.g., NVIDIA Thor).

Prerequisites

  • OS: Ubuntu 20.04 or 22.04

  • GPU: NVIDIA RTX GPU

  • Driver: Latest NVIDIA Linux Driver

Step 1: NVIDIA Developer Account & NGC

To access Omniverse container images, you need an NVIDIA NGC account.

  1. Register: Go to ngc.nvidia.com and create an account.

  2. API Key: * Log in to NGC. * Click your user profile (top right) > Setup. * Click Get API Key. * Click Generate API Key. * SAVE THIS KEY. You cannot see it again.

Step 2: Install Docker & NVIDIA Container Toolkit

If you haven’t already, install Docker and the NVIDIA runtime.

# 1. Install Docker
curl https://get.docker.com | sh \
  && sudo systemctl --now enable docker

# 2. Setup NVIDIA Container Toolkit repository
curl -fsSL https://nvidia.github.io/libnvidia-container/gpgkey | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-container-toolkit-keyring.gpg \
  && curl -s -L https://nvidia.github.io/libnvidia-container/stable/deb/nvidia-container-toolkit.list | \
    sed 's#deb https://#deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-container-toolkit-keyring.gpg] https://#g' | \
    sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nvidia-container-toolkit.list

# 3. Install Toolkit
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y nvidia-container-toolkit

# 4. Configure Docker
sudo nvidia-ctk runtime configure --runtime=docker
sudo systemctl restart docker

Hybrid Workflow (WSL + Windows)

This section explains how to set up the “Hybrid” development environment where the Simulation runs in WSL (Linux) and the Visualization runs in NVIDIA Omniverse USD Composer on Windows.

Note

Windows can access WSL ports via localhost automatically in standard WSL2 configurations. The simulation publishes on port 5555 by default.

Configuration Instructions

1. Prepare the Simulation (WSL)

Ensure your environment is ready and you can run the simulation:

# In WSL Terminal
micromamba activate biologger-sim
pip install -e .

# Verify you can run the help command
python -m biologger_sim --help

2. Configure Omniverse (Windows)

We need to tell Omniverse where to find our custom extension. Since the code lives in WSL, we will point Omniverse to the network path.

  1. Find your WSL Path: * Open Windows Explorer. * Type \\wsl.localhost\Ubuntu (or your distro name) in the address bar. * Navigate to your project folder: .../biologger-sim/omniverse/extensions. * Copy this path. It should look like: \\wsl.localhost\Ubuntu\home\username\Projects\whoi-mpg\biologger-sim\omniverse\extensions.