No daylight savings on the time. Intentional?

Tyberius Lambert

T
I live in the UK, and when I started Elite: Dangerous the in game time was in sync with GMT, I'm presuming this is because the developers are also in the UK.

And then a few weeks ago daylight saving began (I think it affects the rest of the world), so now the time is one hour ahead of what it normally is.

This change didn't happen in game, now it's pretty obvious that it wouldn't because their isn't a single sun to base the in-game time around.

But it got me thinking, is the in-game time set to GMT simply because of Frontier being in the UK or are all ships synced to the Earth over in Sol?

Also, have Frontier taken leap years into consideration?

Just my little musing from my lonely time out in space :)

EDIT: I got slightly confused when writing this, the UK switches between GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) and BST (British Summer Time)

So I'm guessing the game is just set to UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) which is actually also GMT, although GMT is a zone and UTC is a standard.
 
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Aeropilot

A
I think the timezone is UTC rather than GMT, which is rather common in situations where the involved are in many different timezones. And since we're in space and timezones are arbitrary anyway, it makes no sense to switch to any kind of "daylight saving".
 

Dominico

D
Its set at Greenwich mean time. The international time standard. Britain just has the "very dumb" daylight saving from ages ago. So we go an hour out in Summer.
 

Zplintz

Zplintz
Aeropilot said:
I think the timezone is UTC rather than GMT, which is rather common in situations where the involved are in many different timezones. And since we're in space and timezones are arbitrary anyway, it makes no sense to switch to any kind of "daylight saving".
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Technically speaking UTC isn't a time zone but a time standard. GMT is a time zone. Not sure it actually makes any difference (apart from to be pedantic :)).

Daylight saving doesn't make any sense in RL, it would have been a shame if FD had pandered to it or added to the confusion for players in other time zones when the uk changes.

It does mean we can see an extact date and time in station screen shots (would be nice to have a clock in the cickpit too IMO. It also makes recording in-game history a great deal easier.

I would have thought it might simplify arranging meet ups in game if we all follow the same universal clock?
 
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Tyberius Lambert

T
Zplintz said:
Technically speaking UTC isn't a time zone but a time standard. GMT is a time zone. Not sure it actually makes any difference (apart from to be pedantic :)).

Daylight saving doesn't make any sense in RL, it would have been a shame if FD had pandered to it or added to the confusion for players in other time zones when the uk changes.
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I can actually imagine humans in the future being incredibly pedantic and actually keeping daylight savings even when we're on other planets.
 

Rux

Rux
Of course not all planets would observer DST nor would they all switch on the same dates.
 

Rux

Rux
Zplintz said:
Technically speaking UTC isn't a time zone but a time standard. GMT is a time zone. Not sure it actually makes any difference (apart from to be pedantic :)).
Click to expand...

Correct about UTC vs GMT, would make a difference if an area located within GMT observed daylight savings though. (Although I'm not sure there are any)

edited for my stupidity... London uses GMT for most of the year I believe then switches to BST for the summer.
 
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