Time Dilation? Whazzit?

Can anyone explain time dilation to me using small words so my math impaired brain can understand?

Does SL come from the future? If so, what do we have to do now to make ad cutters go away? I have tried reading some of the explanations of time dilation and then my eyes glazed over and I had this strange urge to go buy shoes...

Thanks!
SJ

it basicly means that the lower it gets, the more laggier it becomes, 1.0 is good, lower then 0.80sikes and it gets very lagging

From http://secondlife.com/app/help/guides/stats.php:

Time Dilation - The physics simulation rate relative to real-time. 1.0 means that the region is running at full speed, 0.5 means that physics is running at half-speed.

If the servers are able to simulate one virtual seconds worth of physics in one real world second, the time dilation is 1.0. That is how you want it to be.

If it's taking the server two real world seconds to process one virtual world second's worth of physics calculations, the time dilation is .5. The server's only calculating physics half as fast as it should.

When the time dilation drops, your avatar moves as if the air had been turned to jello.

A huge number of physics objects moving and or colliding might cause time dilation to drop in value and thus everything would be moving slow.

I believe that a excessive amount of non-physics calculations might take part of the processing time needed for physics and thus end up causing time dilation as well. I'm not certain of that, perhaps someone that is more current on things will know for sure.

When the time dilation goes negative, you can find yourself back in a 1985 game. In which case, look out for the Pac-Man, he'll eat you.

thanks for the replies, I read the official description but did not really understand it. Now it makes more sense to me.

THIS is the kind of threads I like to see

Thank you all for the explanations, I have thought off and on about what time dilation is but never asked.

now it makes sense and when I check sim stats I will know more about what I am seeing

Soooo ..... by the fact that the SL sun shines for four hours and hides for two(if I'm not mistaken), hence a 6 hour day, does that mean LL are running SL at 400% time dilation to begin with to buffer the lag? *blink*

I didn't know the term was really used- I have been using it on my own- but I meant it as the amount of time that really happens around me when I am in-world - and how I relate to Residents from other parts of the world. Seems I have lost all concepts of time .