Simulation games cover a wide range of genres and styles, with the goal of simulating an aspect or multiple aspects of the real world within the game. The PC platform has a great history of simulation games, with games focusing on accurate flight mechanics, vast military action, and city building being mainstays since the 1980s.
Simulations seek to accurately represent their given subject, providing details, controls, physics, feedback, and scenarios that could be considered somewhat true-to-life. Early examples of this on the PC include flight simulators. They allowed the player to control a plane from the cockpit, presenting the readouts and controls as if they were a real vehicle. Players would have to factor in airspeed, altitude, directions, fuel capacity, and more, and balance them all to ensure a safe and accurate flight. Nowadays, flight sims can be incredibly complex. It’s not just the plane or planes that are crafted with stunning attention to detail, but the world and how it affects the flight is important, too. With accurate real-world weather being rendered and real-world air traffic flying in the game world, players have been known to build cockpits and use modern sims as training for the real thing. Flight sims are often designed for the player to decide what the goal is, though some also provide missions that would resemble the work of a real-life pilot, such as intercontinental passenger flights. Yes, potential pilots can fly a fully-boarded passenger jetliner from Sydney to New York to Los Angeles in real time.
Closer to the ground, driving and [racing games](/c/racing-games) are another formative and still popular simulation genre. Much like planes, cars have a number of complex systems interacting with the real world, and games have been striving to capture them as accurately as possible for decades. Usually presented in a racing format, car simulations typically have the same fidelity of controls that a real-world vehicle has. The wheel, gas, brakes, gears, and more should all be accurately represented. In addition, there’s also the precise makeup of the engine (including the fuel sloshing around in the tank), the airflow over the vehicle, the rubber left on the track by the tires … it goes on.
But simulations can also have a broader scope. Unless they’re dedicated to a single aspect (like planes or tanks), military sims won’t seek to provide one-to-one accuracy on all aspects of a war. They’ll instead attempt to make battles, movements, and tactics feel real. That’s not to say they won’t be extremely detailed. Most mil sims will ensure bullet physics are accurately represented and that tactical engagement will take into account individual troop's skills and loadout, the shape of the level, and how real soldiers will react in high-pressure environments. Reasonably accurate vehicle simulation is often a part of a military sim but not to the same degree as a driving or racing sim.
City building sims are incredibly popular and enable potential urban planners the ability to practice their craft without worrying about riots. A city can have a number of variables, with most city sims enabling the player to plan out the infrastructure, which includes everything from roads and streets to power and sewage. Though these are all very abstract, they still give a good sense of how things would work; dealing with the degradation that people and industries bring to the world, balancing happiness and progress with economic stability and growth are all aspects that are usually presented to the player. Multiple simulations running at once require a lot of skill to balance, which is often the major goal of city-building sims: to balance all the systems and create a well-running city that benefits everyone. It’s very involved.
A recent trend in simulation games is for careers and hobbies to be simulated. Players can now play games where they build a farming business, dealing with crops, weather, seasons, equipment, supply chains, and more. Or they can run a car mechanic business and strip apart engines to fix. Be a truck driver, or a football manager, or a floor cleaner.