What are the best practices for storing and calculating virtual time in PHP applications?

Storing and calculating virtual time in PHP applications can be achieved by using Unix timestamps and PHP's built-in date and time functions. It is important to store timestamps in a consistent format (such as Unix timestamps) to ensure accurate calculations. Additionally, using PHP's date and time functions allows for easy manipulation and conversion of virtual time.

// Storing virtual time in Unix timestamp format
$virtualTime = time();

// Calculating future virtual time (e.g., adding 1 hour)
$futureVirtualTime = $virtualTime + (1 * 3600);

// Converting virtual time to a human-readable format
$virtualTimeFormatted = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $virtualTime);
echo $virtualTimeFormatted;