One of the most important and long standing uses for computers is the modeling and simulation of, simply, anything. From financial markets and rocket engines to road traffic and food digestion, computers have been designed to mimic real-world actions since the beginning. In 2024, we use them for data entry, event logging, predictive analytics, and so much more, but the tried and true use case never left.
With the increasing speed of computing hardware, computationally intensive simulations move from one-shot background tasks to realtime experiences. This is most apparent in video games, as hardware advances have enabled more physically accurate physics and graphics simulation. Non-entertainment industry has also benefited from such advances, with plane flight and high performance driving being notable cases.