Time or how our world ticks
I love the sunsets and the sunrises of Second Life. Since Windlight, I love them even more.
♥ Greetings, seekers of romance ♥
Good luck, there seem to be a lot more sunrises and sunsets than in RL. But why? And what is the underlying system beneath it? How do we calculate the time for the next sunset or sundown?
I will try to shed some light on this issue and tell you what I learned. If you are into scripting, have a look at lslwiki.net where this is explained from a programmer’s point of view.
For those of you you only want to know when the next sunset and sundown will be, get the FREEBIE that displays the time in minutes to the next sunset and sundown. You find this Freebie at our Beach Store at Eris (100/215/22).
If you are interested to know how this works, go on reading!
Let’s have a closer look at the day-night-cycle of Second Life. A day in SL doesn’t have 24 hours but only 4 hours. Of these 4 hours, 3 have daylight and one hour is dark. During one RL day we have six SL days.
The time in SL is based on the Pacific Standard Time (PST), the timezone of the place in California where the Linden servers are located. During daylight saving time (summer time), the clock in our client is set to PDT. PST has an offset of -8 hours to GMT and PDT has an offset of -7 hours to GMT. For your information I added the CET – Central European Time (GMT +1) and the Central European Summer Time (CEST).
This gets us the following table for the sunsets and sunrises:
| Phase | PST | PDT | GMT | CET | CEST |
| Sunset | 2:30 AM | 3:30 AM | 10:30 | 11:30 | 12:30 |
| Sunrise | 3:30 AM | 4:30 AM | 11:30 | 12:30 | 13:30 |
| Sunset | 6:30 AM | 7:30 AM | 14:30 | 15:30 | 16:30 |
| Sunrise | 7:30 AM | 8:30 AM | 15:30 | 16:30 | 17:30 |
| Sunset | 10:30 AM | 11:30 AM | 18:30 | 19:30 | 20:30 |
| Sunrise | 11:30 AM | 12:30 PM | 19:30 | 20:30 | 21:30 |
| Sunset | 2:30 PM | 3:30 PM | 22:30 | 23:30 | 0:30 |
| Sunrise | 3:30 PM | 4:30 PM | 23:30 | 0:30 | 1:30 |
| Sunset | 6:30 PM | 7:30 PM | 2:30 | 3:30 | 4:30 |
| Sunrise | 7:30 PM | 8:30 PM | 3:30 | 4:30 | 5:30 |
| Sunset | 10:30 PM | 11:30 PM | 6:30 | 7:30 | 8:30 |
| Sunrise | 11:30 PM | 12:30 PM | 7:30 | 8:30 | 9:30 |
Bad luck the clocks tick differently in the new and the old world. There is not only the different offset to GMT, but the Day Light Saving Times differ too. European summertime starts at the last Sunday in March and ends at the last Sunday in October. The United States and Canada observe Daylight Saving Time from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November.
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