What is the deal with Sun/Moon cycles?

Something puzzles me.

If two people are together in a same location, like when I'm with friends at my SL house, each will see a different Time Of Day Sky/Moon/Sun moment. Even if the In-World time clock is the same for everyone.

How strange.

If it is 8am or 2pm or 10pm for everyone... why would pepole within the same SIM (never mind the world, but server sims should be in synch really) share the same Time Clock but have different Time Of Day sky-site?

why sun cycles are linked to users and not to a SIM?

What is the technical reason (or exsuse for lazy coding and networking) behind such nonsense?

Or, am I talking bollocks?

I think you're talking bollocks! Which must mean you're a Brit too?

In general, you can see the same as anyone else, with a couple of exceptions.

On the debug menu, there are a couple of tools that allow you to force, for just your own client, the sun to come up, or to actually position the sun exactly via mouselook mode.

Anyone who isnt seeing what you're seeing has prolly used one of these and just forgot. A lot of people use the 'force sunset' (which is actually force midday, go figure) when building etc. I use the mouselook positioning to put the sun or moon just right for a photograph.

On a seperate note, sim estate owners can play god and change the time of day for everyone, except the tool is screwed.

But in general, when I say 'ooh! look at the pretty sunset' or 'ooh! blue moon!', my companions can see it too

To the best of my knowlege the position of the sun and moon IS the same for everybody in SL unless you adjust it on your own client via the debug menu, OR you are in a sim that has day and night set locally. I know this because using LSL to find the position of the sun was one of the only 2 scipting projects I ever did!

So this is either a bug in SL, or you guys may be misinterpreting each other's description of where the sun is? I dono.

Uh ya.... what Kris said.

this is the issue...

I was at my house with some friend and I said something like:" look, you can see full moon from this window..." and the other Avie said:" eh eh, what are you talking about! I can see the night sky but no moon"

the other friend said... :" what are you to on? Moon? Night sky? It looks like early afternoon to me!

Go figure eh ehhe

yes it could have been the Debug stuff..

Well... I play SL in one corner of the room, and my wife plays in the adjacent corner of the room. And last night I watched the sun rise on her screen, and then waited for it to rise on my screen, and it never did. I asked her if she made the sun rise, and she said no.

Just my personal observation.

Of course your wife makes the sun rise! What sort of husband are you?

I remember a bunch of tests Ezhar Fairlight did last year to discover some things about SL day/night and weather cycles. He determined the length of daylight hours in a given period and actually found that there are seasons in SL. I've been looking for the thread Ezhar posted on it quite a while ago and can't find it. I did, however, find this thread that has some details about SL's virtual astronomy.

Here is Ezhar's work.

http://secondlife.com/badgeo/wakka.php?wakka=llGetSunDirection

When he is not trying to embarass me in his online profile he can actually do some nice work.

Wow, Beryl, that's a cool thread. Now I'll have to go visit Stonehenge. (I also particularly liked the Amazon cosmology.)

The person I talk most with in SL is in the same RL timezone as I am, so it would be possible (as far as my experience goes) to have different sky effects if you are in different RL timezones, or if your computers are set to different times. This would be a side-effect of letting the client manage the position of the sun.

And in fact, the client *does* manage the position of the sun, because you can force the sun to rise in debug mode.

Does anyone have evidence that the sun is in the same position for two users in different RL timezones?

neko

You know, Neko, I haven't seen Jay Powers (the starter of that thread) around SL for a long time, so I doubt his Stonehenge build in Immaculate is still there. However, Siobhan Taylor has her own nifty Stonehenge out in Mocha (203, 66).

Kris how the hell are you the first person to post a reply in every damn thread? You are amazing!

hehe first thing I usually do when logging into Second Life is turn my sun to Mouse Moves Sun

must... have.... total control ;D hehe