I'm assuming the intended meaning is that this was the first time the approach led to "realistic" sound?

That's also not the case. There have been some really accurate physically-modeled instruments for at least 20 years.

Also, aschkually, a violin is on the "easier" end of making it sound realistic. It's one of the "tutorial" models you go through when you start learning about this (resonators + reverb get you 80% there). Much harder to do any plucking sound (guitar, piano), and much much harder to model percussions accurately (cymbals, drums) and in such a way that the sound doesn't come out dry and very evidently synthetic.

Source: I was very invested into this in the 2000s, although as a hobby, not professionally.

Do you know if there has been any progress on conical-bore brass? From what I recall (I did some graduate work in instrument modeling in the late 2000s) reed instruments could be modeled convincingly, but the feedback oscillator with the lip buzzing was very difficult to model.

There's eg https://summit.sfu.ca/item/11130 from a Tamara Smyth and Frederick Scott; Google scholar shows some citations but not necessarily conical brass in particular. That link is about trombones, so also not conical. (I read that and tried to implement some stuff in it, see https://nuchi.github.io/trombone/ for a browser-based playable version.)

Conical and cylindrical bores definitely differ but I don't see why they'd be different specifically with respect to the lip interaction, can you say more about that part?

If this is their definition of "realistic" sound then I'm horrified