Action-conditioned video prediction as a world model for control: actually useful, or a detour from latent-space models?

An open model (LingBot-Video) predicts robot manipulation rollouts from an action and hand-pose signal (the corner panels). It is a generative, pixel-space world model. The clip is fully generated, not a real robot. Genuine question for this sub: is predicting future observations in pixel space useful for model-based RL and policy evaluation, or does the compute cost and drift make latent-space prediction (Dreamer style) the only practical route?