Discussion of Synchronous Update and Asynchronous Update in Traffic Simulation

In reality, vehicles are moving in the same dimension of time and space. In order to reflect this phenomenon closely in computer simulation, the methodology of synchronous update is preferred. But, due to various limitations, such as logic complexity and hard coding of synchronous update based traffic models, most microscopic simulation platforms practically adopt a method combining synchronization and a synchronization to update vehicles´ position. Asynchronous update based traffic models may not be able to well describe practically observed gaming and competition among vehicles. Using the simulation platform - AE, we show that asynchronous update based traffic models is imprecise and would create simulation results of systematic errors.