So the programmers live in a 4D space-time with the same geometry rules and they programmed it using our mathematics and our level of hardware?
Yes to the physics. But no to the level of hardware. Obviously our world is far more detailed than the video game worlds we currently can make but the same overall rules apply.
If you look at our world and think about how we create simulated worlds in our reality we typically create worlds based on the same physics as the world we inhabit. And we try to conserve computing power with short cuts. For example, one of the simplest things you see in every video game we make is that the computer only renders the part of the environment where your character is. So if you are outside of a building, the computer will only render the outside. It won't waste computing power trying to render the inside of the building until your character walks in.
We see this same phenomenon in our world when we look at quantum mechanics. Physics experiments like the Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser Experiment essentially confirm that our reality behaves differently based on whether we are consciously observing or we're not. Essentially when we are not looking our reality doesn't exist. But when we look it comes into existence. No different than the mechanics we currently use in our own video games. Regardless of how much our technology advances, there will always be limitations because its impossible to simulate every particle in the universe at all times unless you have a computer larger than the universe. That's why even a super advanced civilization that can create simulations as realistic as our world will have to take the sort of short cuts we use right now in our own video games.
