fsx-ms Adjusting Sim Time

[RPadgham 0]

Hi all.

Sorry if this is covered elsewhere - if it is I can't find it!

 

I would like to offset my flying time so that I can fly in daylight, (easily done in FSX > Time & Date), but I would like the aircraft to show the true Zulu Time (UTC) on the clock and in the FMC. This would make position reporting a whole lot easier.

I flew an  Iceland event two days ago, and got so confused because I was unable make an oceanic request because I couldn't work out the estimated times quick enough! 

 

I've tried reading about FS Realtime, but the info is quite technically advanced and I'm not sure it does what I want it to.

 

Hope I've made this clear enough. Does anyone have any ideas?

 

Thanks.

 

Rob Padgham

[Lorby_SI 2,055]

The Sim AFAIK has only one time keeping mechanism (based on UTC). The local time is just a conversion of that time, meaning, when you shift it, you shift UTC too.

 

To my best knowledge you cannot just say "I want it to be day in Iceland at 01:00 UTC" in the sim, when in reality it isn't. You could only play with the seasons and the day of the year, see if you find the right lighting for you. At least for the nordic countries or in Antarctica this might even work, seeing that they have perpetual dark in winter and constant daytime in summer. But not anywhere else on the globe I guess.

[airernie 263]

You might want to look into FSRealTime to see if will do what you wish. 

 

I can't say I've had a great deal of success with it, but there are those that seem to love it.

[ddswh1pk0s 8]

I've tried fsrealtime but found that it wasn't that good. If you have registered FSUIPC theres a setting in there that keeps the minutes and seconds in sync, when you start your flight match your UTC of the sim to the UTC on your computer and you should be good to go

[Pe11e 812]

What FsRealTime does anyway? It corrects local time based on your position? I flew from Zurich to Doha yesterday, departed at 8am and after 6 hours of flight landed at 14pm ZULU time, and 5pm local time on sunset. So I guess FSX did the job with time zones? When I fire up ASN it says that Doha is only +1 from UTC, I don't know why. Anyway back to the question, what FsRealTime do?

[skelsey 765]

FSRealTime synchronises the FS clock with your system time so that the UTC time in FS is always correct (the FS clock has a tendency to run fast/slow and so FSRealTime corrects this). However, I find that when FSRealTime updates the clock I get frequent reloads (which did not occur in FS9) which invariably lead to FS crashing, so I've stopped using it (fortunately the FSX clock is slightly more reliable than the FS9 clock).

 

The local time conversion is based on a BGL file within FS. Unfortunately MS got some of the time zones wrong, and there are some issues around daylight saving in some places as well (for instance, I think the Eastern Standard timezone changes to/from daylight saving either a week or two early or a week or two late, I forget which now -- either way the impact is that there are a couple of periods around the end of March/October where New York, for instance, is GMT-5 in the sim when it should be -4 in real life and vice-versa). FSRealTime comes with a replacement BGL which should fix some or all of these errors.

 

I don't think it's possible to do what you want (set the local time in the sim to be one thing and manipulate the UTC display). However, my suggestion is that when you fly, synchronise the minutes with the real time (so if you depart at 2125Z, but you want the time in the sim to be, say, around 11Z -- just set the time in the sim to be 1125Z). That way when you get an ETA of, say, 57 minutes past the hour it's only the (fixed) number of hours you have to work out! (FSRealTime can do this as well -- synchronise the FS clock to a fixed offset from the real time (say + or - a certain number of hours).

 

Hope that helps.

[Pe11e 812]

Thanks!

So, if I got it right, I cannot use FsRealTime since I fly only historic dates (currently in November 2015)? Also, I think I found bgl file that corrects time zones in FSX, I will check that once again.

[RPadgham 0]

Thanks all,

 

I tried FSRealtime last night and it doesn't do what I need. I found a small program at FS Mine which has a time converter - I can enter my present Simulator time, then enter a reporting time (eg. oceanic or an ETA), and it will spit out the true Zulu equivalent.

 

I prefer daylight flying: having spent a lot of money on scenery, It's nice to be able to see it!! and the PMDG taxi lights aren't too useful at unfamiliar airports.

 

Thanks again.

Rob Padgham

[scott967 62]

FSX contains built-in time zones based on longitude.  But they did it wrong in assigning the limits of UTC.  FS2k2, FS9, and FSX have the ability to add scenery files that override the default time zones.  For FSX, this includes the ability to set a "DST" offset.  FSX as supplied, contains a single scenery file that provides the override time zones for the US and western Europe, including DST offsets as they were defined when FSX was released.

 

FSRealtime normal mode is to force sim UTC to system UTC, but also has the ability to set different times.  Included with FSRealtime was a world-wide set of override timezone files designed for FS9, but they work in FSX.  Because they were designed for FS9, they don't have the DST offsets.  Instead, a utility program is provided that swaps out the time zone override files based on day-of-year.  So by editing the config file for that utility, you can change the day on which the DST files are swapped in (or out).

 

scott s.

.