simulated IMC under NVFR
 

The requirements for the NVFR rating, I understand, are:
- 10 hours at night, including
- 5 hours dual cross country flight time at night under the VFR
- at least 1 hour solo circuits
- at least 3 hours dual instrument time

61.105 says, variously

any time spent piloting an aircraft solely by reference to instruments and without external visual reference points in IMC or simulated IMC

does this mean that if I wear the hood at night, on a cross country, that time can be logged as NVFR dual cross country, and dual instrument flight time?

Yes. NVFR are the flight rules you're flying under, instrument flight relates to the conditions, including being under the hood.

Where people start to disagree is logging IF when flying into the "black hole", i.e. a completely dark night with zero ground lights or external reference to attitude, but still VMC.

I don't know about CASA land but in CAA NZ land you cannot double dip.

In other words if you need to count the time towards a licence or rating it can only be counted towards one thing. In this case either the flight time requirements for a NVFR rating or towards the IF flight time requirements not both.

It seems to me that by reading another of your posts you seem to be keen on cutting corners, not a good trait for someone looking for a career in aviation.

If you are under the hood, who is performing the "visual" part of NVFR? It ain't you, so you can't double dip. You don't fly day or night VFR with a screen up and a hood on.

Do the night hours looking out the window and cross-checking with instruments, and separately do the instrument stuff under the hood with a safety pilot/instructor doing the lookout.

I would normally teach the three hours under the hood during the day, here (among other things) you learn inbound and outbound on navigation aids which become very helpful on your night navs. IMHO there is already enough to do and learn on a night navigation exercise without IF under the hood being thrown into the mix.

doing my first night XC last night, there were a few blackhole sections where I essentially flew on instruments (no hood) and glanced out looking for traffic occasionally as part of the scan.

it was just like wearing the hood, except that I could see the town once I had the ADF tuned, and could then navigate visually to the town (except I didn't, because the other half of the exercise was to practice ADF/VOR intercepts).