Questions about the new clock and system / orbital time zones.

[Rongoth]

I watched the Traffic Control video posted by Frontier earlier this afternoon and noticed the new clock in the top right hand panel.
What got my attention was both the new clock and the station clock was in sync so I have a few of questions about this.

• Will players be able to set their own local real life time so our American friends (and others) can have a better sense of what time it is in the real world without doing the maths and us Brits can set it to BST if we want or will it always be set to GMT?
• Will there be a "system local time" as it would seem odd travelling several hundred light years to another star system and find they're on GMT time as well.
• Will different orbitals have their own time zone as some planets would be larger and some smaller so having a 24 hour clock in some cases would have too many hours or too few.
• Am I thinking too much about this?
  Spoiler

  I think the answer may be a yes!

Still though, that Traffic Control is awesome!

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Gametime is GMT.

Currently there is gametime already in Galmap, non editable. I assume this will stay as otherwise it'll be pointless communicating times to other players. Although I get the whole calculating thing, it's a pain for non-uk people

 

[geoffrey.hdt]

I believe FDev has already answered that the time will be GMT.

As for system local time, it might actually be specific to each inhabited planet when planetary quests will be implemented by Bethesda in one of the future expansions. Mind to adjust your dinner and sleep time when you swap between worlds.

 

[Thetele]

Well in universe like elite one time make a lot of sense. Everything is easier when all live by same clock. I would rather suggest that every one on earth throw time zones away and use UTC so clock would be same all around of the world. It would make things much easier.

 

[FrogsFriend]

You can always use a hardware mod to show Player Local Time... by placing a 'clock' next to your monitor

 

[Sentenza]

For the last three - in reality, each system/planet would have its local time, but all traffic (and therefore stations) would be still UTC, otherwise there would be galactic chaos. The same reason we use UTC today.

As for setting a player local time - I would not do that for the same reasons, it is a multiplayer, international game, say we want to be there at the same time, you talk BST, I talk CET, another player PST, what damned time is it??? UTC gives us all a common reference frame.

 

[ShadowWolf Kell]

GMT, UTC or Zulu Time, take your pick. It's the universal time zone standard for a lot of applications. It makes perfect sense in Elite in more ways than one.

 

[Yaffle]

As others have noted game time is UTC. Timezones mean very little in space, so everything just needs a reference point.

The ISS uses UTC for example. It has 16 sunrises/sets a day which would be confusing to have its own timezone.