PhysX Lightbeam

The PhysX SDK lightbeam sensor is deprecated. Use the Physics Raycast Sensor (isaacsim.sensors.experimental.physics.RaycastSensor) configured as a beam curtain to achieve the same functionality.

Concept mapping

PhysX SDK Lightbeam Sensor	Physics Raycast Sensor
numRays	Length of the rayOrigins / rayDirections arrays. Create one entry per beam.
curtainLength / curtainAxis	rayOrigins. Spread ray origins along the curtain axis. For a vertical curtain of height h with N ≥ 2 beams: origins[i] = [0, 0, -h/2 + h * i / (N-1)]. For the single-beam case (N == 1, the legacy default in SensorSchema.usda) use origins = [[0, 0, 0]].
forwardAxis	rayDirections. Set all direction vectors to the forward axis. For example, [1, 0, 0] for a curtain firing along the X axis.
minRange / maxRange	minRange / maxRange. Same semantics.
Per-beam hit / depth / position data	RaycastSensor.get_sensor_reading() returns per-ray depths, hit positions, and hit normals.

Interactive example

The Physics Raycast Sensor example includes a beam curtain sensor configuration with parallel vertical rays:

• GUI: Open Robotics Examples > Sensors > Physics Raycast Sensor and click Load Scene.

• Source code: source/extensions/isaacsim.sensors.physics.examples/isaacsim/sensors/physics/examples/raycast_sensor.py

See Physics raycast sensor for the full documentation, including Python API usage and OmniGraph workflows.