[petermcneeley]

They used low inertia cloth and solids because these are the kinds of scenarios that this technique can best approximate.

Once you buy into the concept that your simulation can be represented by a very limited number of parameters it's not hard to suggest that this small state vector can be mutated from state to state using ML.

The issue with this technique is PCA not ML.

I can certainly see this technique being used in place of some existing simulation or animation based secondary motion in video games.

Note that adding up the contributions of 256 basis vectors might be more expensive than a per vertex cloth simulation.

I am experienced in these areas and have done grad computational physics and work on game engines for a living.