Wrapping game date & time

[PeterR]

Although you can currently set and force everyone to the same game date and time, how about being able to wrap the time so that a session could always be "day" or "night" without intervention from the server admin?

Why would you want to do this? So that Real Weather would be more consistent among all participants while providing known lighting conditions at any time of the real-world day or night. Currently, our server doesn't force the time of day because most people like to fly during the day independent of the real-world time.

Wrapping time would have some anomalies such as when the date should change. If you specify a start time and end time for a "day", would you increment the date when the end time is reached and continue at start time? Or would you only increment the date when the end time is reached and the true date has changed? Another possibility would be to have an option where the game date would be the local time but always am or pm. Not as flexible but easier to operate even if the server reboots unattended.

Of course, flight plans would also be adversely affected by these wraparounds especially the total flight time. Not sure what effect on weather this would have apart from a sudden change at the wrap time (although Real Weather has sudden changes already).

To wrap the date you'd specify a starting date and ending date to create a session that stays in a particular season.

Just a crazy idea to try to create a "known" environment consistent for everyone connected.

[Russell Gilbert]

Thanks Peter, some great ideas there.

I've thought of that problem also, how to keep everyone in a particular time period.  You've covered several good points that would have to be worked out.

Russell

[PeterR]

Yeah, it's kinda tricky. Let me know if you have a revelation.

[CowBoyGuy]

I've been running FSHost for awhile now, and I see a trend for my client connections.... I Live in the US, Eastern time (utc-4) and most pilots are in between 1900 and 0100 my local time.

Maybe this could help you get things running at a reasonable time frame until an option is available...

While I have not really tried to force a time on the pilots ( I think I turned it on during a test once) it allows you to pull PC time for all users. If you are looking for afternoon/evening flight conditions with users in the 1900-0100 time period.... why not change the time on the PC running FSHost -8, so 1900 is 1100, 0100 is 1700.

Adjusting your time by -8 puts 'afterwork' pilots in the sky during the daylight hours.

[PeterR]

We have pilots flying from a variety of areas (US, Europe, Australia, South Africa). Building on your suggestion has led me to a solution for our situation. Run two to four sessions on the server with the time shifted accordingly.

For example, a dual-time server would have each session set 12 hours behind the other. A quad-time server would have each session set 6 hours behind the other. If it gets too bright or dark in the session you're in, go to another one.

I'll have to see if I can have more than one session on the same server with different times. The time/date dialog looks like it would support it.

Very cool! Thanks CowBoyGuy!  

[PeterR]

Looks like it'll work. To make it convenient, it'd be great to have a "Server time offset" option so that whenever that session of FSHost is started, it'll automatically use the selected offset from the local server time.

Incidentally, it would be beneficial to have the RemoteAccessPublic page show the current game time in addition to the server time.