In what situations or scenarios would using flush() in PHP be more beneficial or necessary compared to traditional output buffering methods?

When you need to send output to the browser immediately without waiting for the script to finish executing or when you want to display real-time progress updates, using flush() in PHP is more beneficial than traditional output buffering methods. This is especially useful in scenarios like long-running scripts, file downloads, or streaming content.

<?php
ob_start();
echo "Processing...";

// Flush the output buffer
flush();

// Perform time-consuming task
sleep(5);

echo "Task completed!";
ob_end_flush();
?>