content/html/_sources/user_guide/sim_user_guide/10_overview.rst.txt

..
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  Copyright (c) 2021 Bayerische Motoren Werke Aktiengesellschaft (BMW AG)
                2021 in-tech GmbH

  This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the
  terms of the Eclipse Public License 2.0 which is available at
  http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-2.0.

  SPDX-License-Identifier: EPL-2.0
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Overview
========

|Op| is a tool for executing a traffic based Monte-Carlo simulation and provides capabilities for the following two levels of variation:

#. **Experiment:** Topmost, an experiment defines the domains of possible inputs, which shall be compared, such as *"traffic at high volume"* with *"traffic at low volume"*.
   In this sense, a parameter variation is done at a very coarse level, resulting in two sets of inputs.
   Note that this level is covered by the GUI (see :ref:`pcm_simulation_guide`).

#. **Invocation:** When an input-set is available, |op| invokes a defined number of runs, resulting in a probabilistic sampling of the given state under parameterizable conditions.
   For example, in the aforementioned situation *"traffic at high volume"*, it would generate participants at *"lower speeds"* and *"smaller gaps"*.
   Thereby parameterizable means, that the user has the freedom to define probabilities defining *"lower speed"* and *"smaller gaps"*.
   In each invocation, |op| samples from these probabilities to generate a possible traffic situation under the given parameter variation.