[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzGu0D7qks0]

Massive software has been used for crowd sim in many major motion pictures.  LOTR super nerds will recognize it from the extra-special extended version of the DVDs.  This was exposed at a time I was just beginning to use 3D CAD modeling for digitalia.  It was probably the first time since the original TRON that I looked at what was augmenting live action.  Critique, yeah, sorry.  I think it’s pretty solid.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C8sr1nHTBg]

I’m old.  At least, I’m older than most of my class mates.  I’m actually 53.  Being from a bygone era, I remember when a major car company first announced all-computer testing.  It was around 1993 and the car, or series of cars were the Chrysler LH series.  Lee Iacocca did the commercials then and boasted (paraphrasing) ‘…the first car completely designed and tested by computers’.  It would have been more accurate to say, ‘the first consumer car’ as land-speed-record rocket cars were probably actually first.  The video shows what is current in crash simulation.  It is inspiring to see simulation becoming reliable enough to push the boundaries of design.  It allows us to push our own boundaries in the universe.

You can read the details HERE about a TUFT’s U. study using e-coli bacteria to encode messages.  It’s interesting that biologic computation works both ways in the simulation realm.  We synthesize patterns like growth, and use organisms to simulate things something like QR codes.  It’s also interesting to think of microorganisms and genes as synthesizing a sense of purpose in human life, which may be no more important than it was for troglodytes.  Survival of the fittest.