From what we know of the Infinite Forest, it is a place the Vex use to simulate trillions to potentially an infinite number of possible/alternate realities, a place they can use to predict with virtually perfect fidelity what events will lead to what outcomes within the Universe proper. Panoptes was such a threatening force during the "Curse of Osiris" story-line because Panoptes was coming close to figuring out para-causal forces such as the Light and Darkness, threatening to lead to a reality where the Vex were dominant. Now, it is partly due to how the Destiny Wiki entry on [url=https://www.destinypedia.com/Garden]The Garden[/url] that I have come to the realization I am about to share, but I consider it eye-opening when you look at it from the following angle. Here are the ways the Garden is described in The Unveiling lore entries: [quote]Once upon a time,* a gardener and a winnower lived** together in a garden.*** * It was once before a time, because time had not yet begun. ** We did not live. We existed as principles of ontological dynamics that emerged from mathematical structures, as bodiless and inevitable as the primes. *** It was the field of possibility that prefigured existence.[/quote] First off, as a field of possibilities, which exists outside of time. Rather, outside of time as defined within the Universe. Within this field of possibilities, the Gardener and Winnower played a game: [quote]In it, you may construct a universal computer with the power to simulate, very slowly, any other computer imaginable and thus simulate whole realities, including nested copies of the flower game itself. And the game is undecidable. No one can predict exactly how the game will play out except by playing it. And yet this game is nothing compared to the game played by the gardener and the winnower. It resembles that game as a seed does a flower—no, as a seed resembles the star that fed the flower and all the life that made it. In their game, the gardener and the winnower discovered shapes of possibility. They foresaw bodies and civilizations, minds and cognitions, qualia and suffering. They learned the rules that governed which patterns would flourish in the game, and which would dwindle. They learned those rules, because they were those rules.[/quote] Part of the metaphor in the comparison to the "Game of Life" within "the Flower Game" entry is to a universal computer capable of simulating other computers, whole realities, and nested copies of the game, something which the Vex are known to be capable of doing. What is more noteworthy, however, is what the Gardener and Winnower see within the shapes of possibilities. Entire civilizations, minds, conscious experiences and the rules of physics that govern the "patterns". We also know, based on the lore of the Unveiling, that the Pattern - the Vex - [url=https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/patternfall#book-unveiling]originated from the Garden after the universes were fully created.[/url] As to their simulations, especially within the Infinite Forest, I am beginning to wonder if the similarities between the "field of possibility" and Vex simulations aren't just coincidental and that the technology of Vex simulations may be intended to replicate the nature of the "field of possibility". There are limitations, such as the Vex not being able to simulate the physics of the Light or of the Darkness, even if they are capable of boot-legging simulations based on physical observation, such as Osiris's trip into a simulation of the Vault of Glass and, later, the Season of Dawn simulation where reality was annihilated at the subatomic level with a Pyramid floating over the remains of the Last City. However, everything else still lines up for the Infinite Forest and Vex simulations as a whole to be a technological copy of what occurs within the field of possibility.