Installing the OOD-PerceptionBench asset pack v0.9
Target: an official CARLA 0.9.15 Linux build (the packaged release, the one with
CarlaUE4.sh and ImportAssets.sh at its root). Not the source tree, not any other
version.
This pack overwrites one file in CARLA's base content (
CarlaUE4/Content/Carla/Blueprints/Walkers/WalkerFactory.{uasset,uexp}). That is unavoidable — seeWALKERFACTORY_DECISION.md. It hard-locks the pack to 0.9.15 and it is why you should install into a copy of CARLA reserved for this benchmark rather than a shared one.
1. What you get
| Tarball | Contents | Licence | Download |
|---|---|---|---|
ood-perceptionbench-props-v0.9.tar.gz |
static.prop.concreteroadbarrier, static.prop.roadclosedbarricade |
CC BY 4.0 | 15.8 MB |
ood-perceptionbench-walkers-ccby-v0.9.tar.gz |
walker.pedestrian.astronaut, .deliveryrobot, .boar + WalkerFactory |
CC BY 4.0 | 38.4 MB |
ood-perceptionbench-walkers-ccbync-v0.9.tar.gz |
walker.pedestrian.firefighter |
CC BY-NC 4.0 | 112.3 MB |
166.6 MB to download, 185.5 MB on disk, 195 files.
The props tarball touches nothing outside its own content directories and is safe to
install anywhere. The two walker tarballs are useless without WalkerFactory, which is in
the walkers-ccby tarball: if you want the firefighter you must also install
walkers-ccby, even if you do not want the other three walkers.
If your use is commercial, skip walkers-ccbync (see ATTRIBUTION.md).
2. Install
cd /path/to/CARLA_0.9.15 # the directory containing CarlaUE4.sh
# 1. verify what you downloaded
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS
# 2. drop the tarballs in Import/ (omit the ccbync one for commercial use)
mkdir -p Import
cp ood-perceptionbench-*-v0.9.tar.gz Import/
# 3. unpack them into the build
./ImportAssets.sh
ImportAssets.sh is CARLA's own script. It runs
find Import/ -type f -name "*.tar.gz" and extracts each one from the CARLA root, so the
tarballs are rooted at CarlaUE4/ and land in the right place with no --strip-components
or path juggling. You can equivalently do it by hand:
tar --keep-newer-files -xvf Import/ood-perceptionbench-props-v0.9.tar.gz
The --keep-newer-files trap
ImportAssets.sh passes --keep-newer-files, which makes tar silently skip any member
whose modification time is older than the file already on disk. Members in this pack are
dated 2026; stock CARLA 0.9.15 content is dated 2023-11-10, so extraction proceeds
normally. But if you have previously copied files into Content/Carla/Blueprints/Walkers/
by hand and given them a current timestamp, WalkerFactory will not be replaced, no error
will be printed, and none of the four walkers will register. Step 3 below catches this.
Tested: installing over a stand-in "stock" WalkerFactory dated 2023-11-10 replaces it
correctly (post-install sha256 matches the pack's).
3. Verify — do not skip this
A missing CARLA asset does not raise. If a blueprint ID is absent, the benchmark harness
substitutes a different actor (vehicle.tesla.model3 for a pedestrian) with a single
stdout warning, and the route completes with a plausible Driving Score. Nothing in the
result JSON records that the wrong thing was measured. A five-minute check now is the
difference between a number and a meaningless number.
# terminal 1
./CarlaUE4.sh -carla-server -RenderOffScreen -carla-rpc-port=2000
# terminal 2 — needs the `carla` python module from this build's PythonAPI
python3 tools/verify_pack.py --port 2000 # add --without-nc if you skipped the NC tarball
Expected tail:
VERIFY OK — all six shipped assets registered, spawned and matched reference dimensions;
no phantom ID is spawnable.
Exit code 0 means installed correctly. Anything else: stop, fix, re-verify.
The verifier checks that each of the six IDs spawns, not merely that it is registered.
That distinction matters: the four walkers are registered by WalkerFactory, and a
WalkerFactory entry with no content behind it still appears in the blueprint library.
4. Phantom blueprint IDs — expected, harmless, unusable
After installing, world.get_blueprint_library() will advertise nine walker IDs whose
content is not in this pack:
walker.pedestrian.soldier walker.pedestrian.wheelchair
walker.pedestrian.ball walker.pedestrian.caneman
walker.pedestrian.cow walker.pedestrian.crutcheswoman
walker.pedestrian.deer walker.pedestrian.labrador
walker.pedestrian.tire
They are artefacts of shipping a WalkerFactory cooked from a build with more assets than
this pack contains. All nine are unspawnable: try_spawn_actor returns None,
spawn_actor raises RuntimeError: Spawn failed because of invalid actor description.
They cannot silently give you a wrong prop. Do not use them. verify_pack.py asserts that
none of them spawns.
soldier and wheelchair are real benchmark props whose source models are not
redistributable; the other seven belong to unrelated experiments and appear in no
benchmark route.
5. What you can run with this pack
237 of the benchmark's 475 routes.
| Category | Runnable | Total | What is missing |
|---|---|---|---|
| static | 30 | 70 | 40 routes need 4 non-redistributable props |
| pedestrian | 126 | 162 | 36 routes need soldier / wheelchair |
| vehicle | 81 | 243 | 162 routes need 6 non-redistributable vehicles |
The 145 base-level routes need no pack at all — they use native CARLA blueprints
(walker.pedestrian.0001/0014/0028, static.prop.trafficwarning,
vehicle.*.cooper_s_2021/coupe_2020/mkz_2020). The pack adds the 92 shift-level routes
covered by its six assets: 18 each for astronaut, firefighter, boar and deliveryrobot;
10 each for concreteroadbarrier and roadclosedbarricade.
The remaining 238 routes are not runnable at v0.9 and running them anyway will produce substituted-actor results that look normal and are not comparable to anything. Replacement assets and a re-run are the v1.0 scope.
6. Uninstall
Delete the six content directories, then restore WalkerFactory from a pristine CARLA
0.9.15 (there is no copy of the original in this pack — take one before you install if you
care):
rm -rf CarlaUE4/Content/{Astronaut,Firefighter,DeliveryRobot,Boar,ConcreteRoadBarrier,RoadClosedBarricade}
cp /pristine/CARLA_0.9.15/CarlaUE4/Content/Carla/Blueprints/Walkers/WalkerFactory.* \
CarlaUE4/Content/Carla/Blueprints/Walkers/
7. Rebuilding the pack from a CARLA build
For provenance. build/build_asset_pack.sh reads a CARLA build read-only and reproduces
the three tarballs and both manifests:
build/build_asset_pack.sh --carla-root /path/to/carla --out /path/to/assets
Exclusions applied during the build (each verified unreferenced) are listed with reasons in
build/EXCLUSIONS.tsv.