Yes, apart from some works by Nicholas of Cusa, humanity discovered simulations in the 20th century... by analogy. Then, sci-fi popularized the ideas. Basically, the idea is that we have worlds. Our big world, and then smaller ones in our consciousnesses, which are hard to reduce to the bigger world (hard problem of consciousness). Even with all the progress of AI, computer worlds are more like reflections. (However, our own internal world can be reflections too, say, of God's Consciousness).

But if we leave the subjective idealistic view and return to the substrate (those particles and waves), nowadays there are ideas that what we "see" and model as 4D spatio-temporal reality could be a result of more elementary structures. For example, pure cause particles, multiplying in the suitable substrate with emergent 3D space and other effects.

However, it probably does not matter what kind of physics world dwellers can observe—they can always suspect they "live in a simulation."

Only the Absolute One God can be sure... by definition. While creatures like us can try to guess whether we live in the first simulation or if there are several turtles "under" us.

As for non-local physics, it keeps the door open for understanding that the world has greater coherence than Newton and even Einstein imagined.

Though I’ve seen one recent research paper stating that quantum states become so mixed (in chemical reactions) that information becomes practically noise (unrecoverable), much like in black hole radiation.