Timezones

Hi,

I'm currently working on a study project which involves a small analysis of Second Life in relation to Gilles Deleuzes time image. I got stuck on one thing so far: how are time zones working in Second Life? I found out that PST is 'the' time, but I'm wondering more about day and night. I just visited Amsterdam and Sydney, which had daylight, and New York, were it was night. This wasn't correct according to real life. Can the owner of a location set his own timezone or something?

I'm looking forward to your answers and maybe even to other clever insights !

Regards,

Martin

The default setting is for 3 hours of daylight followed by one hour of nighttime. I think it is the same "time" all over the grid and bears no relation to any RL timezone. This holds on the mainland, but private island owners can fix the time to anything they like. And of course every resident can change the time of day they see to whatever they like.

Wow, that was quick! Thanks!

So, correct me if I'm wrong: when two Second Life users are communicating they don't necessarily both see daylight/dark? And so there are 18 hours of day and 6 hours of night in a SL-day (not in that order).

Interesting stuff

Yes, 6 "days", each of 3 hours light and 1 hour dark per 24 hours in RL.

Two AVs standing right next to each other in the same sim need not necessarily be seeing the same time of day, one could have used the Enviroment Setting to set their time to midnight, the other could have set their time to noon, and the actual sim could be running through the default cycle and be at sunrise or sunset.

You will often see sims that in their welcome notecard suggest adjusting your time to midnight (and occassionally other times of day). Many of the dark RP sims look best and have more atmosphere if you set to midnight.

On my own land which is currently landscaped for winter, we recommend setting to midnight to see it at its best, but if I and my partner are dancing on our west-facing terrace overlooking the sea we usually set to sunset, and if we're on our building platform above the land working on something we would set to noon for the clearest view.

Yes. As a matter of fact, some events and/or private islands are decorated to be specifically seen at a certain time of day. Thus, you have to adjust your client's time when teleporting to these places.
I personally almost always force daylight whenever I see it's getting too dark. Not because I'm afraid of the dark, but just cuz I like to be able to see my surroundings clearly.

Thanks again, you really helped me out .


So a land-owner can set his own season/weather? Cool...

There's no "weather" per se in SL, except for the wind. But you can landscape and decorate your land to simulate a season, and you can recreate rain and snow with scripted prims and/or particle generators.

This is what I meant by landscaped for winter Martin. Our landlord has put snow textures on the ground (this can only be done on private islands), and we have put out snow generators which drop particles that simulate falling snow. In autumn we had fog generators and the landlord put a texture of grass and fallen leaves on the land.

If you want to see what I mean, we are at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Samhain/86/119/31.

And if you want to play with the time of day go to World>Enviroment Settings.

Ok then, I think that's it for now. Thanks a lot to you both!