Daylight saving time idea

[bprice]

Most of the U.S. switches to Daylight saving time from March to November. Some other countries use different dates and even in the U.S., some states do not observe DST.

It would be nice if there was a toggle to activate DST in Open Rails. For example, in my area Sunrise is at 6AM and sunset is at 9PM during the longest daylight in June. In standard time that is 5AM to 8pm.

This is a particular issue for passenger activities with timetables. If you adjust the time back using the "-" key the actual timetable times are unchanged indicating that you are an hour ahead of schedule. Having a DST toggle would make it simple to adjust for DST. Toggle it as you go through New Mexico and not when you go through Arizona where DST is not observed.

Again, thanks to the OR team. It jus keeps getting better and better.

Thanks
Basil

[OTTODAD]

Hi Basil !

Mike Simpson's RW_Tools for Railworks / TS-2014 makes that easy in its Scenarios Editor.

Load a Standard scenario in it, change its starting time and select to adjust all other running AI services starting times accordingly. At the same time all stopping and starting times of AIs at stations in their paths will be modified too.

In MSTS / ORTS doing that gets more complicated because of the many different times specified in their Activities and Traffic files !

[Rick-MONON]

In MSTS the easist thing would to have an optional env file that changes the daylight hours that you would copy in and paste or vice versa.

[cjakeman]

Hi Basil,

It would be nice if there was a toggle to activate DST in Open Rails. For example, in my area Sunrise is at 6AM and sunset is at 9PM during the longest daylight in June. In standard time that is 5AM to 8pm.

I guess this also applies to crossing time zones. But what happens in real life? I'm guessing that rail timetables are like plane flights and advertised using local times. What does the railroad engineer do? Does he change his watch when he crosses a state-line? Perhaps Open Rails should jump an hour forward or back at the appropriate location.

I wonder what they do in Australia.

[bprice]

In MSTS, I adjusted the .env files to reflect DST. When I crossed time zones I used the dominant time zone. For example, if I was going from Clovis into Texas, I would use Central time even though the activity started in mountain time.

[seagoon]

I wonder what they do in Australia.

Not all states have adopted DS, so train schedules/plane schedules still operate much the same as they always do.

For example, if one was travelling from Sydney (DS) to Brisbane (non-DS) then the advertised aircraft departure time in Sydney will be Sydney (DS) time.
It would, however, have an arrival time on the board at Brisbane airport shown in local (non-DS) time.

It's no big deal, really.

Bruce

[seagoon]

Mike Simpson's RW_Tools for Railworks / TS-2014 makes that easy in its Scenarios Editor. ...

But this is not TS2014, it's Open Rails.

[cjakeman]

For example, if one was travelling from Sydney (DS) to Brisbane (non-DS) then the advertised aircraft departure time in Sydney will be Sydney (DS) time.
It would, however, have an arrival time on the board at Brisbane airport shown in local (non-DS) time.

So, Bruce, I take it that the train schedules in Australia follow the same practice as the airlines.

To implement this in Open Rails, we might give each station an optional timezone/state and give each activity an optional daylight-saving flag for the timezone/state.

Then perhaps we could offer the player the chance to change the displayed time whenever he crosses a timezone/state boundary with a different local time. Such boundaries would be an optional record in the route. Don't think we would want to change the displayed time automatically.

"No big deal, really" might be understating it, I think.

Wikipedia tells me that Australia uses +8, +9.5, +10, +10.5, +11 which should be interesting.

Chris
OR Dev

[seagoon]

"No big deal, really" might be understating it, I think.

Wikipedia tells me that Australia uses +8, +9.5, +10, +10.5, +11 which should be interesting.

Chris
OR Dev

What I meant is that when one is living with it on a daily basis then it's no biggie.
It may be a different matter when attempting to replicate it for a sim.

The US and Canada also have various time-zones across the continent, just as we do. In fact, including Alaska, the US has more than us.
But when Daylight Saving is added to the formula Down Here, because some of the states don't adopt it we end up with a north-south difference as well as the normal east-west time zones.