Currently on a two week round the world flight in a RealAir Duke Turbine 2.

Discovering lots of errors in time zone offsets as I fly to various countries.

For example. I'm currently on the ground at Uluru (Ayers Rock) in central Australia. Real world time is 15th Aug 2030Zulu. Local real world time on the ground is 0610 Australian Central Standard Time, which is +9:30hrs ahead of Zulu.

But in the sim, the clock on the dash shows local time as 0540 even though the UTC time in the sim is correct at 2040 the previous day. So the time zone offset is only +9 hours and not the required +9:30hrs.

The clocks in the sim were also wrong in Surabaya, Indonesia, but have been correct in several other places.

So the only reliable way to navigate through time is to use UTC/Zulu, as the local time offsets are wholey unreliable as you move around the different time zone locations.

Anyone else found this and know if there is a fix?

Cheers,

SimElite Solutions Time Zone Fixer

FS Real Time

Superb. Thanks! 🙂

 

I've been using flight sims ever since the first Microsoft effort in the 80's and never come across this before, as I usually fly within my own country, the UK where I have full photo scenery. Always something new to learn...! 🙂

 

Why would I pick one of these solutions over the other.

SimElite seems to answer all the time zone questions I was asking about.

But FS Real Time seems to add yet more ability and possibly unneeded complexity.

Any guidance out there for my choice?

1 hour ago, SledDriver said:

Why would I pick one of these solutions over the other.

SimElite seems to answer all the time zone questions I was asking about.

But FS Real Time seems to add yet more ability and possibly unneeded complexity.

Any guidance out there for my choice?

You use them in conjunction.

SimElite creates the accurate time zones to pass through.
FS Real Time keeps your elapsed time in the sim in sync with the time elapsed in the real world.

If you do mid- to long-haul flights and / or cross several time zone boundaries regularly, I think the combination is a no-brainer.
 

I remember looking at these and determined that Time Zone Fixer covered off what I needed.

I only use TimeZone Fixer.

I don’t recall ever having an issue with elapsed time.

8 hours ago, F737NG said:

You use them in conjunction.

SimElite creates the accurate time zones to pass through.
FS Real Time keeps your elapsed time in the sim in sync with the time elapsed in the real world.

If you do mid- to long-haul flights and / or cross several time zone boundaries regularly, I think the combination is a no-brainer.
 

I bought Time Zone Fixer yesterday and hope it will solve the wrong time zone problems. But why is FS Real Time needed? For those that have a registered version of FSUIPC5 won't the option to keep the sim time synced to the PC's time do the same?

I have been using the Time Zone Fixer for about two years and have never found a need for FS Real Time.  I really like that SimElite has made frequent updates to their time zones as things change and errors are found.  Highly recommended.

Q: Does it really matter what the local time on the FS clock shows? in aviation you generally use UTC anyway. The only issue I can see here is for time driven events like local departure time of AI traffic 

Is it more important that the FS sun rises and sets at the correct UTC times (which it does)  

just saying! 

I just make sure that P3d is set to the current Zulu time (not local) and go on down the road.  I regularly fly  10-12 hour or more flights and have yet to see where it makes a difference.  When I flew for a living my world revolved around Zulu time, not local. 

Yea I know I'm old. 🤣

P3D changed how it loads a scenario in a different time zone.  It used to work perfectly if your default flight was in your local time zone and you were indicating the correct UTC time, the scenario would load at the same UTC and of course whatever local time was supposed to be.

Since they changed how scenario loads work, i.e. after selecting scenario it returns to the scenario setup screen,  P3D no longer observes the correct UTC offset for different time zones.  To make matter worse, if you have a scenario loaded in a different time zone the time you set on the scenario setup screen applies to your default location.  I have found I need to set the scenario local time to have it load at the correct UTC time.  One cannot set the scenario to the desired UTC time because it then uses your local UTC offset to translate that to the scenario local time, and it is only the local date/time that is observed by P3D when it loads scenarios.  Look at the scenario .fxml file and the section for season date and time is local.  It works the exact opposite of the way aviation works, and more like one would expect a game to work.

For example, I am in the CDT time zone UTC-5 and if I want to start a scenario in Hawaii (UTC-10) at 1200z then after I select the scenario and P3D returns to the scenario set up screen, I must set the time to 2200L to load at 1200Z.  If I set the time to 1200Z the scenario will load at 0700L because it uses my offset of UTC-5 and not Hawaii's UTC-10, and 0700L is of course 1700Z.  It took some time for my to get my mind wrapped around how twisted P3D can be with UTC, something that should be as simple and direct as possible.

Simelite Real Time Flight Manager When you load your flight to a different time zone this app will set the correct time at the new location. No more guesswork as to what the correct time is.