Aren't cellular automata used in video games? One of the simplest ways of doing fluid simulation in 2D works on similar principles. Eg http://www.jgallant.com/2d-liquid-simulator-with-cellular-au...

A lot of simulations will likely be done in a manner that's similar to CAs. Pixel shaders run once per pixel, which make this type of abstraction quite attractive. You can take advantage of the massive parallelism of GPUs.