A pretty good example of where physics have gone in video games is in pinball, pool and golf sims. The earliest of these generally had very simple ball movement

A pretty good example of where physics have gone in video games is in pinball, pool and golf sims. The earliest of these generally had very simple ball movement behaviors and the constraint solving, to the extent that it existed as a concept, was designed to execute fast and model physics sometimes. And this remained basically true through the 16-bit generations. But by the mid-90's it was just starting to be possible to do it somewhat right. There were a lot of pinball, pool, and golf games released in this time frame, as well as some of the early physics puzzle games(namely The Incredible Machine). So by now you'd imagine it's close to perfect, right? Well, not really. Most video pinball games still emphasize the "video" part of it. Bounces are muted, the ball rolls a bit too smoothly, and the flipper angle dictates the shot trajectory more than in reality. And the same is true with other genres: there are plenty of things not modelled. The best sim games are much better, but they still have their lingering issues.