Simulated Time
All simulators have a “clock” that represents global time
In animations and in many other types of simulations, this time is advanced at regular intervals, as a physical clock would advance
But there is no reason for the simulator to advance the clock one tick at a time if there is nothing happening over long periods
For example, if traffic is being simulated and at a
given time t, all vehicles are stopped and nothing
will change (except the clock) for 10 ticks, then
advancing time to t+10 will produce the same result
as stepping through all of the intermediate times