Headless & Automated Runs

PteroSim can run without a visible window — for CI pipelines, Docker containers, reinforcement-learning training, and display-less servers. You drive the running instance over the gRPC Python API Reference; the flags below control how the process renders and how it accepts the license agreement without a human present.

Render modes

Two command-line flags produce a windowless run, but they are not equivalent — they differ on whether the GPU renders at all:

Flag	`-RenderOffScreen`	`-nullrhi`
On-screen window	No	No
GPU rendering	Yes — renders to an off-screen buffer	No — null render hardware interface
Camera / image sensors	Work (frames are produced)	Unavailable (no frames rendered)
Resource use	Full GPU	Minimal — no GPU
Use when	You need camera sensors, screenshots, or pixel data	You only need physics, dynamics, and non-visual sensors

Common companions: -nosplash (skip the splash screen) and -unattended (declare there is no interactive user, suppressing engine dialogs).

# Cameras must render (vision / RL training):
PteroSim.exe -RenderOffScreen -nosplash     # Windows
./PteroSim.sh -RenderOffScreen -nosplash    # Linux

# Physics only, no cameras (lightest footprint):
PteroSim.exe -nullrhi -nosplash             # Windows
./PteroSim.sh -nullrhi -nosplash            # Linux

Accepting the EULA

On the first launch, PteroSim requires acceptance of the End-User License Agreement (shipped as EULA.txt next to the executable). How that happens depends on whether anyone can click a dialog.

Interactive run (normal window)

A windowed launch shows the EULA dialog once. Clicking Accept writes a flag file (eula.accepted) into the save directory (PteroLabs/). Every later launch — including headless ones — sees that file and skips the prompt.

Headless / non-interactive run

A run where nobody can click Accept cannot show the dialog. This covers -nullrhi, -RenderOffScreen, -unattended, dedicated servers, and commandlets. In every one of these, consent must be given up front, either way:

Environment variable PTEROSIM_ACCEPT_EULA set to Y, YES, or 1
Command-line switch -AcceptEula

Setting the variable or passing the flag constitutes acceptance of the Agreement. Both are checked on every launch, before any dialog is created.

Warning

-RenderOffScreen renders fine but shows no window, so the EULA dialog has nowhere to be clicked. Without consent, a non-interactive run prints a notice and exits with code 1 — it does not hang. Supply the env var or -AcceptEula on the first headless launch.

Note

The eula.accepted file is only ever written by clicking Accept in the GUI. A machine that has never had a windowed launch (a clean Docker image, a display-less CI runner) has no such file — always pass PTEROSIM_ACCEPT_EULA=Y or -AcceptEula there.

Examples

# WITHOUT consent → prints notice, exits with code 1:
PteroSim.exe -RenderOffScreen               # Windows
./PteroSim.sh -RenderOffScreen              # Linux

# WITH consent → starts normally:
PteroSim.exe -RenderOffScreen -AcceptEula   # Windows
./PteroSim.sh -RenderOffScreen -AcceptEula  # Linux

Linux, via the environment variable:

export PTEROSIM_ACCEPT_EULA=Y
./PteroSim.sh -RenderOffScreen -nosplash

Windows PowerShell:

$env:PTEROSIM_ACCEPT_EULA = "Y"
.\PteroSim.exe -RenderOffScreen -nosplash

Docker — set consent once in the image or at run time:

ENV PTEROSIM_ACCEPT_EULA=Y

docker run -e PTEROSIM_ACCEPT_EULA=Y my-pterosim-image