As team lead Ashish Kapoor explains to The Verge, this isn't meant to replace real-world testing. It's more of a complement that can either account for hard-to-reproduce circumstances or perform extremely repetitive tests. Instead of having to launch a drone with just a few months of flying under its belt, you could have data equivalent to years of flight time.

Moreover, the simulator isn't necessarily confined to testing hardware. Microsoft sees its tech helping with all kinds of computer vision and machine learning code. Really, this is more of an AI playground than a narrowly-focused tool. Whatever the initial goals may be, there are many more possibilities.