Real-time simulation refers to a mode of representation or artistic production in which a world or system is continuously updated through real-time computation, often using game engines or similar technical frameworks. In the provided context, John Gerrard is described as having long used game engines and real-time simulation to treat large-scale systems such as oil, agriculture, energy, and the environment as worlds that are continuously calculated. The text also notes that technologies such as 3D Gaussian Splatting make it possible to capture traces of real objects and places and transform them into an operable real-time world.
A key feature of real-time simulation in this context is that the viewer can manipulate the world, but the range of possible actions is already defined by underlying infrastructures such as engines, servers, and data formats. In other words, the simulation is not merely a technical method for immediate rendering; it is also a way of reconfiguring reality and data as a dynamic world, while making the computational substrate part of the work itself. The surrounding discussion connects this idea to live simulation, where a world changes autonomously without human intervention.