Environments · Live or simulated

Two ways to run it

The same software, the same picture, the same decisions. What differs is where the contacts come from.

Before anything else, DomeCommand needs to know where its picture comes from. There are two answers, and the choice shapes everything you do next.

	Simulated	Live
Contacts come from	A scenario you author	Real sensors on real hardware
Hardware needed	None	Sensors, and a network to reach them
Can commands reach hardware	No	Yes
Repeatable	Yes, from a seed	No
Good for	Evaluating, training, rehearsing, tuning doctrine	Operations

You can do a great deal in simulation before buying anything. Simulated sensors have real detection models, so the picture behaves the way a real one does: contacts firm up as they close, a bearing-only sensor still cannot localise on its own, and a raid still saturates the planner. Doctrine you tune in simulation is doctrine that transfers.

That is the intended on-ramp. Run exercises, decide what sensor mix you need, tune posture and rules, and connect hardware once you know what you are connecting.

The three environments

	What it is
Dome Lite	Simulated, in the server process. Kinematic contacts, real sensor models, no camera video. Nothing to install.
AirSim	Simulated, in a game engine on another machine. Adds photorealistic camera feeds. See Photorealistic simulation.
Live	Real sensors and real vehicles.

Switch between them in Settings → Environment. Changing environment resets the runtime and discards anything staged, so it is something you do once rather than during an exercise.

Nothing crosses between them

Assets, zones and runs each belong to one environment. A real aircraft does not appear in a simulated picture, and a simulated one does not appear in a live picture. That holds on every screen, including ones written after the rule.

In practice: you can rehearse against the site you actually defend, during operations, without the two pictures touching. The exercise cannot pick up a real aircraft, and a real aircraft cannot be mistaken for part of the exercise.

The two refusals

Both of these are refused rather than warned about.

A live sensor cannot be switched on inside a simulated environment. It would put a real feed into an exercise, and someone would draw a conclusion from a picture that is half invented.

The simulator cannot be switched on inside a live environment. It would put fabricated contacts on a real picture, which is the worst thing a command system can do.

Both appear on the Integrations page as rows you can read, disabled, with the reason given. You are never offered a switch that comes back as no.

Connections follow the environment

Attaching an environment opens the connections that make sense for it. Nothing is seeded and nothing lingers.

Environment	What connects
Live	Your real sensors and radios, over the protocols you have enabled
Dome Lite	An in-process link. There is no external process to talk to.
AirSim	MAVLink pointed at the simulator's aircraft, which are real autopilots

Where to go next

• Simulation to run something today, with no hardware.
• Sensors for what each kind of sensor gives you, when you are ready to connect real ones.