  Simulation relations are an important tool in automata theory because they
provide efficiently computable approximations to language inclusion. In recent
years, extensions of ordinary simulations have been studied, for instance
multi-pebble and multi-letter simulations which yield better approximations and
are still polynomial-time computable.
  In this paper we study the limitations of approximating language inclusion in
this way: we introduce a natural extension of multi-letter simulations called
buffered simulations. They are based on a simulation game in which the two
players share a FIFO buffer of unbounded size. We consider two variants of
these buffered games called continuous and look-ahead simulation which differ
in how elements can be removed from the FIFO buffer. We show that look-ahead
simulation, the simpler one, is already PSPACE-hard, i.e. computationally as
hard as language inclusion itself. Continuous simulation is even EXPTIME-hard.
We also provide matching upper bounds for solving these games with infinite
state spaces.
