Local Planet Time on On Foot HUD or Insight Device

londonx

L
It would be interesting to know the local time on a planet when on foot walking about, is it morning or evening? Difficult to tell unless watching the shadows.
I assume seconds would remain as a human constant so time would be displayed as a proportion in hours of the planets rotation from the point of the main star at its apex like 02:30/08:00
This would show up on your helmet HUD next to the compass or on the insight Device
 

Ski'Thor

Ski'Thor
I think this would not really work.
But a simplified info with a hours:minutes timer till sunrise and sunset would work.
Sounds easy, but could be a coding Nightmare :D
 

zikolach

zikolach
Interesting how would it work in the case of star system with multiple stars located in close proximity? Also I would guess for distant planets it might not work at all especially if star is not bright enough. Not sure.
 

DemiserofD

D
I would really like it if missions to planetary locations would give the current time of day at that location. For example, I might not want to go somewhere at night, because I don't like being unable to see what I'm doing. On the flip side, if it's a particularly hot planet, I might not want to be there at high noon, or I'll overheat and die.

Having that information immediately available would be very nice and convenient.
 

londonx

L
DemiserofD said:
I would really like it if missions to planetary locations would give the current time of day at that location. For example, I might not want to go somewhere at night, because I don't like being unable to see what I'm doing. On the flip side, if it's a particularly hot planet, I might not want to be there at high noon, or I'll overheat and die.

Having that information immediately available would be very nice and convenient.
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Yes that would be a good use case, especially when choosing a Combat Zone with a good backdrop on a planet with an atmosphere, because the day/night divide shown on the planet model in the System Map is representative of the game world situation
 

varonica

varonica
Ski'Thor said:
Good Point!
When the body is orbiting a star, this star should be the base value.

"What is time?" :)
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When a body is orbiting a star that is orbiting a star? The OP obviously wants to use this as a way to tell if it is light or dark on the surface where he is, I suggest looking out of the window! Time in the case of multiple stars is purely arbitrary to whether it is going to be light or dark on the surface of a body. How do you measure time on a tidal locked body, is it always the same time, high noon with the time to nightfall infinite? However the OP clearly wants hours defined by the speed of the bodies rotation, so an hour could, in fact, be five minutes earth time for one body and 6 months earth time for another body, so in one case sunrise would be 20 minutes away (4 planet hours) and on the other body sunrise would be 24 months away (also 4 planet hours).

Or alternatively he want to know how many earth hours until sunset, which means applying a 24 earth hour clock to a body with a non-24 hour rotation period. Eventually noon will be the middle of the night and midnight will be during the day because you can't sync the two because you are applying an earth day to a planet that rotates in more or less than an earth day. So you could look at the time on the planet at the base and it says noon, but when you land there it's the middle of the night.
 

zikolach

zikolach
I would be sufficient I guess to provide just some metric characterizing light conditions in the settlement at current moment of time (and maybe temperature and gravity). In the future there would be also weather conditions added if we have thicker atmospheric planets.
 

Nepeta Uchiha

Nepeta Uchiha
I think having the UTC is just fine. Having local times on planets fall apart on tidally locked planets that have days that last months or even years.
 

babelfisch

babelfisch
So if I fly in the other direction I can go back in time? Sounds like Superman.

Anyway, time could only be measured in earth time. We need an info how long a day is on a planet (0.5 / 1.6 / etc. earth days). Then each settlement could tell us how long it is until starrise / starset. Obviously this doesn't work for multiple stars but IIRC the engine only renders one light source anyway?

Or we just take a look at the system map.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Doesn't even need to be tidally-locked - a high enough axial tilt will make this sort of time calculation incredibly messy on at least some of the surface.

There's a gas giant moon near me where the moon is tidally-locked to the gas giant, so of course has sunrise and sunset as normal as it moves around the giant. But the axial tilt on it means that many locations on the moon get several Earth years of permanent darkness in winter and permanent sunlight in summer. (The gas giant's orbital period, which is what's relevant here for the axial tilts, is something like 10-12 years)

So on some points of the surface you get a normal day/night cycle on a "tens of hours" sort of scale, then at some point you'd get above the permanent line and that time would flip to "next sunrise in 6 weeks", then "next sunrise in 60 weeks" as you headed further north/south.

It would be very neat to have that information in-game somehow - probably the "easiest" way to expose it, and one capable of letting people answer other interesting questions too, would be to add the time forward/backwards controls from FE2/FFE to the Orrery interface
 

Northpin

Northpin
Having a local time on a planet is rather irrelevant.
Tidally locked planets and weird orbital characteristics for satellites or very long orbits would mean the local time would tell us nothing

However, how long the night is (or how long the day is) could be an interesting fact to know
So, the only thing they could add is time to sunrise / time to sunset.

But as been pointed out already, it would mean a really daunting task (if not plain impossible) to develop an algorithm that is able to do that, reliably, on each and every body out in the galaxy.
Sure, they could implement one for the bodies with really simple orbits, but that would be a rather tenth arxed job
 

varonica

varonica
zikolach said:
Does it relate to light conditions or rotation speed?
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Rotation speed of course.

Nepeta Uchiha said:
The game does tell us how long a day is on every body in the system map so at least that's something.
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Yes that's correct, the length of a day is determined by rotation speed, but that could have nothing to do with light and dark, I have been on planets that are basically permanently dark because they are so far from a star, also a planet with the correct rotation period orbiting a gas giant could have one side permanently dark and one side permanently light. Even here on earth with a 24 hour rotation period we still have areas of the planet that are inhabited and have days and nights 6 months in length, so the length of a day must be determined by rotation speed and not light/dark.
 
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