Considering that Metaform was essentially a poor man's RealFlow, yeah, there is a -LOT- that could be done with a 64bit multi threaded, updated version. Lots of people don't realize that 'fluid effect' means =anything= that changes shape to adapt to its surroundings. An MFII would do fire (and with current shaders, -light producing fire- that didn't look phony), smoke (or clouds. Hello new ideas for skydomes! All it takes is a collision plane that's invisible to keep the meta's above a certain height, and you can suddenly produce very nice cloud effects, again depending on the shaders), or any kind of liquid you want. Like oh, a running shower. A bleeding wound. A flooding room. A broken pipe. A garden hose. etc etc etc.

Toss in a particle generator for hair, and the range of potential effects you could create would literally skyrocket (particularly if the 'hair particles' could 'grow' on the runtime geometry of the metaballs. The sim time would be...imposing...but having a fluid effect that has the kind of grainyness to it that you only get in the real world...? Geekout!).

Yeah, it would require you to actually touch the timeline and set up (gasp) an animation for simulating, but those controls don't bite. Really.