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highways1

Timezone Issues Despite Having FS RealTime

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Hi everyone, just wanted to see if I was doing something wrong. I have FS RealTime (registered copy and installed and run as admin) installed with the timezone package that came with it but I still have some issues. Best examples I can give are SFO one hour behind LAX and DFW one hour behind ORD. If anyone has a suggestion, I'd be happy to try.


Brandon Sherzer

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Can you provide more detail on how you are testing? I've analyzed the data in the replacement timezone scenery bgl files, and other than some instances of daylight savings date changes (which is handled using a config program outside of fsx) the timezones are pretty accurate (some recent changes needed such as Samoa changed to New Zealand Itime, Indiana US changed time for example). What's needed is the date, the GMT time that fsx shows, the local time, and the aircraft location. You might also go into the scenery library and set the tz04 (timezone) scenery area to inactive, and see what the time is with the default timezones. I would have to double-check my memory, but if you remove the addon timezone scenery and also the default timezone.bgl in scenery\base\scenery, the time zone boundaries are 75 west, 90 west, and 105 west, which might be what you are seeing.

 

scott s.

.

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Thanks for both suggestions, I'll reply based on what I've seen to provide more detail. I was originially seeing the 75,90,105 etc timezones before an unrelated reinstallation of UT2 which I know has some timezone files in it. In that case I was seeing things such as PHL and EWR offset by an hour but that has been corrected. I've not seen any difference with daylight savings ending and I've tried redoing my default flight. For a more specific example, this is what I get for LAX and SFO. If I fly on June 21, 2012 (I like flying on the longest day of the year frequently) and I set the time at LAX to 12:00 local the GMT time is 19:00 which is correct. However if I do this for SFO, I get a local of 12:00 and a GMT time of 20:00 which obviously should not occur.


Brandon Sherzer

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Just to be sure - since you have UT2 have you gone into the UT2 program and reset the time zones with the DST change? I have a similar issue and it always drives me mad until I remember to go into UT2 and reset. Once I do that no resetting default flight, etc, everything is back in place.

 

Good luck.


Joe Lorenc

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The problem isn't on your end, it's within the coding of FSX.

 

When FSX was released in 2006, daylight savings time in the USA ended late October and started late March. FSX was coded to match this schedule. A couple years later the US Congress changed DST so it ended early November and started early March.

 

FSX was never patched to fix this, so for a couple weeks the times will be off between FSX and the real world.

All you can do is wait until the gap closes.

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I'm not sure though that's my only issue here. It's been happening since I installed a new copy onto my new computer in April after not having played in a little while. I don't remember this happening on my first FSX go-around but I'm not certain. I'm pretty sure DST has nothing to do with LAX being an hour ahead of SFO. This isn't a situation like Arizona or Indiana where their timezones change during the year.

 

The problem isn't on your end, it's within the coding of FSX.

 

When FSX was released in 2006, daylight savings time in the USA ended late October and started late March. FSX was coded to match this schedule. A couple years later the US Congress changed DST so it ended early November and started early March.

 

FSX was never patched to fix this, so for a couple weeks the times will be off between FSX and the real world.

All you can do is wait until the gap closes.


Brandon Sherzer

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If I'm reading your posts right, you are saying you go back in time and are flying on June 21st? Well there's your problem. I don't believe FSRealTime or FSX with behave correctly if you do that. You should set your system time to June 21st, delete the default flight and then create a new one, then fly on that date.

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Turns out that Joe L's solution of updating UT2's timezone file was the way to go. Thanks for everyone's help.


Brandon Sherzer

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OK, let's go back and review some things:

 

1. FSX has what I call "two phases". The first is setup phase. The purpose is to set a local time and compute the appropriate GMT. The second is the run phase. The purpose is to maintain GMT and adjust local time as needed. In setup, local time is determined either from system local time or saved flight time (depends on fsx.cfg setting).

 

[sim]
SYSCLOCK=1

 

In setup, GMT is computed from aircraft position and whatever timezone data is available in the sim, which is applied to the local time as an offset in minutes. In the free flight UI, you can always see what that offset is by examining the time/season entry.

 

The base system for timezone offsets (used when no timezone bgls, either provided in the default install or addons, are present) uses longitude-aligned timezones. These timezones are 15 degrees of longitude wide, centered on 0 degrees, except that the "zulu" timezone (or GMT) is 30 degrees wide. As a result, all the other timezones are moved too far (7.5 degrees) east/west.

 

Example: the US Pacific Standard Time is in the "U -8" timezone (112.5-127.5 west lon). However, FSX base has it (120-135 west lon). This is an issue where KLAX is at 118.4w or -7 while KSFO is 122.37w or -8. Note that FSX base has no "daylight savings" defined. Time is the same year round.

 

The default install of FSX provides a timezone scenery file, scenery\base\scenery\timezone.bgl. The design of this file is shown in the FSX sdk (bglcomp). (Note that certain attributes in the sdk don't work). The timezone.bgl file only covers US and Europe as shown here by the hashed boxes (all timezones are defined as lat/long bounded boxes with a time offset from GMT and an option start/end, and time offset for "daylight savings". This shown in the default timezone.bgl file for example Arizona, US which does not observe DST in the MST (T -7) timezone. (Note: the magenta timezone boundaries on this picture are the "primary" real-life boundaries, not those found in FSX).

 

 

 

Where US DST is observed, the default timezone.bgl is set for 60 minutes from the Sunday on or after April 1 to Sunday on or after Oct 23 (non-leap years).

 

I don't know what UT2 does.

 

Note that the FS Realtime provides addon timezone scenery TzFiles04. This addon does not use FSX bglcomp sdk, instead uses earlier scenery methods which do not have the daylight savings offset. So FS Realtime (or manually) runs the DSTorSTD.exe uitlity to swap files (with different timezone offsets) on the appropriate dates for DST. TZFiles04 is designed to add to, not replace the default timezone.bgl which should be left in place.

 

scott s.

.

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I think what my larger issue happened to be was that I had done an uninstall and reinstall of UT2 and had not updated the timezone files. I don't think that FS Realtime had anything to do with this and moreover it's possible I bought the program without needing it although I respect what it does. This issue was happening during DST and after DST so I think it was just forgetting to update UT2 that caused my problems.


Brandon Sherzer

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Hi guys, how to do so would be in London,-1h, I will now show the time equal to UTC(FS Realtime)

 

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