[MiceWithYaffle]

Yeah, it's not for crypto. But I think it's for more than simulation and rendering. It's meant as a general purpose PRNG. It's just as good for randomized algorithms like picking the pivot in quicksort, or playing games, procedural content generation (PCG!), or whatever you want to use it for.

I think that the whole point of the prediction difficulty stuff is that a library (e.g., C++11's) with general purpose PRNGs can't know how they'll be used. Maybe some idiot write code for a gambling machine in C++ and use whatever PRNG is to hand. There was a story in the news the other week about people going around casinos predicting slot machines, so maybe this has already happened! PCG is trying to make your simulation and rendering code fast while trying to offer at least some defense against egregious misuse.

Basically PCG is trying to be a good all rounder. As you say, it's meant as a replacement for the Mersenne Twister.

[starmole]

I found the story: https://www.wired.com/2017/02/russians-engineer-brilliant-sl...

And yes, PCG is harder to exploit in this way than the Twister, but you still really should not bet money on it!