Global Positioning System (GPS) based control has recently been reported as a replacement of droop control to achieve fixed frequency operation in islanded microgrids. This article presents the perspective that the power sharing performance of a general microgrid synchronized by GPS is essentially determined by equivalent output impedance. A novel adaptive virtual impedance control approach, which implements different values of virtual resistance for d- and q -axis, is proposed accordingly. The virtual resistance concept is implemented comprising a basic local implementation for output impedance shaping, and a sparse resistance tuning network for the compensation of mismatched feeder impedance, which demands no knowledge of actual output impedance. The resistance tuning network utilizes the consensus protocol and only requires neighboring interactions among DG units. A complete tuning of output resistance for a given load condition results in accurate active and reactive power sharing even after communication is interrupted and will still outperform conventional droop control methods if load changes during the interruption. Small-signal analysis based on delay differential equations model of the overall microgrid is performed to investigate the adverse impact of communication delays on system stability. The efficacy of the proposed approach is validated by both simulation and experimentation.