how to make time flow faster when playing?

[blast]

Hi,

 

I would like to host a mission that will start at early morning and end at dusk. But I would like this mission to last only 4 hours. Does someone knows if we can make time flow faster when playing in multiplayer game? For example to set 1 hour = 2 hours in game.

[Spetz]

Ctrl + Z.....:)

 

Actually, I don't believe there is anything you can do to change clients passage of time in multiplayer.

[sslechta]

I believe Aerobatics Online for instance, has their mission set so that it ends at sunset. It's a 4 hour mission so the start time would be around 4 hours before sunset.

[cichlidfan]

Think about driving to work while time was moving twice as fast. Remember, your own reaction time is still the same.

 

Nobody would want to play such a mission, even if it could be done.

[Cibit]

There was a keyboard combo that accelerates time so you could try different times of day. It was different to speeding up the game as a whole. It was in a Wags video once. I would like to know what it is too :)

[Pikey]

ctrl-z, ctrl-s etc its in the manual i think.

There is no scripting function to set time of day instantly. For sure.

[feefifofum]

I believe OP is asking for an accelerated day/night cycle, not for time to literally be moving at 4x normal speed. :lol:

 

As others have said, this is not possible. You'll have to choose whether you want dawn into day or dusk into night. There is no time skip feature etc. everything occurs in real time.

[Boosterdog]

as a noob time already moves thatt fast!!

[blast]

Feefifofum ->

I believe OP is asking for an accelerated day/night cycle, not for time to literally be moving at 4x normal speed.

Exactly, i'm looking for an accelerated day/night cycle, and not for a moving speed time which would be really... useless lol

[cichlidfan]

Feefifofum ->

Exactly, i'm looking for an accelerated day/night cycle, and not for a moving speed time which would be really... useless lol

 

This is a simulation. You can't have one without the other.

[blast]

This is a simulation. You can't have one without the other.

 

As far as i remember the open conflict server was doing this. And as sslechta said, aerobatics server is doing it.

[Mars Exulte]

This is a simulation. You can't have one without the other.

 

Sure you can. It is quite common in many games, Arma is an example that pops to my head.

 

All "time" is in a game is the position of the sun and ambient lighting levels. There is no "simulation" to it, buddy. Don't overcomplicate things.

 

That said, it appears what the OP is asking for is not currently possible, so all moot.

[Hyperion35]

Does DCS vary the daylight hours based on the time of year? I'm thinking that maybe at the very least if you set a mission for the winter solstice (usually December 21st or 22nd), you'd at least have an early sunset, so you could have a two-hour mission start at 2:00pm and it might be finishing up at sunset.

 

If we had a far Northern map, Alaska or Siberia or some such, that would probably make this easier.

[shagrat]

Sure you can. It is quite common in many games, Arma is an example that pops to my head.

 

All "time" is in a game is the position of the sun and ambient lighting levels. There is no "simulation" to it, buddy. Don't overcomplicate things.

 

That said, it appears what the OP is asking for is not currently possible, so all moot.

 

Unlike most other "games" DCS simulates even the exact hemisphere and sun, moon, stars accordingly, so you coukld use celestial navigation.

There is no way to instantly speed up the day/night cycle other than have the whole world simulation run faster. Pretty simple. So correct, the answer to the OPs question is: It is not possible!

[Mars Exulte]

Unlike most other "games" DCS simulates even the exact hemisphere and sun, moon, stars accordingly, so you coukld use celestial navigation.

There is no way to instantly speed up the day/night cycle other than have the whole world simulation run faster. Pretty simple. So correct, the answer to the OPs question is: It is not possible!

 

 

Yes, I know. All very good. And no, that is not a hard block on the concept except DCS does not currently allow it. All that is still applicable whether the days are 24 hours long or ten minutes long. Completely and utterly irrelevant. Time is an arbitrary concept, and in a game is no more than a variable that can be altered.

 

DCS does not allow for accelerated Day/Night cycles.

 

There is no fundamental 'road block' to the concept beyond them having chosen not to do it. They could have configured the days to be six hours long in the first place and it would not alter the physics in the game.

 

Completely separate notions.

 

I'm a big fan of the series, but I have involuntary cringes when people start throwing 'simulation' around like it means anything more than a genre :p

 

Hell you can even do a 'fade to black' and teleport forward in time, for that matter. It's arbitrary. DCS doesn't do it for the same reason it doesn't do lots of things : Because it's at heart a twenty year old game that has received a long series of facelifts and botox injections, cleaning up wrinkles and trying to look nice ) There's still a lot of old code and old concepts under the hood.

 

 

I distinctly remember suggesting the ability to change camos in mission, and was shouted down 'because unrealistic'. Fast forward a few months to the UI facelift and that's exactly what we got. Time warp? Suspension of disbelief? And don't get me started on the ten minute repair and reloads.

 

It's a game. A detailed, highly complex game, but a game, and is not magically exempt of the common principles that apply to ALL bits of code.

Edited March 11, 2018 by zhukov032186

[Flagrum]

Yes, I know. All very good. And no, that is not a hard block on the concept except DCS does not currently allow it. All that is still applicable whether the days are 24 hours long or ten minutes long. Completely and utterly irrelevant. Time is an arbitrary concept, and in a game is no more than a variable that can be altered.

 

DCS does not allow for accelerated Day/Night cycles.

 

There is no fundamental 'road block' to the concept beyond them having chosen not to do it. They could have configured the days to be six hours long in the first place and it would not alter the physics in the game.

 

Completely separate notions.

 

I'm a big fan of the series, but I have involuntary cringes when people start throwing 'simulation' around like it means anything more than a genre :p

 

Hell you can even do a 'fade to black' and teleport forward in time, for that matter. It's arbitrary. DCS doesn't do it for the same reason it doesn't do lots of things : Because it's at heart a twenty year old game that has received a long series of facelifts and botox injections, cleaning up wrinkles and trying to look nice ) There's still a lot of old code and old concepts under the hood.

 

 

I distinctly remember suggesting the ability to change camos in mission, and was shouted down 'because unrealistic'. Fast forward a few months to the UI facelift and that's exactly what we got. Time warp? Suspension of disbelief? And don't get me started on the ten minute repair and reloads.

 

It's a game. A detailed, highly complex game, but a game, and is not magically exempt of the common principles that apply to ALL bits of code.

Too bad, the rep system is gone ...

 

The thing is, in DCS time has a meaning and is a necessary component to multiple, vital aspects of the things that are simulated. Right now GPS for navigation comes to my mind. How shall a nav system using GPS function if the day is only 4 hours long and every satelite position is suddenly wrong? Ok, not sure, if really the sat positions are exactly simulated, but in the Ka-50 you can lose accuracy if you lose LOS to too many satelites, i.e. in a narrow valley.

 

And yes, it is a game and does not simulate everything 100%. But ED tries. And if the goal remains to be accurate, then ideas like this _at least_ make things more and more difficult (to find believable workarounds for aspects that are more complicated than "day time ... night time ... day time ...").

[FragBum]

Could you not make the overall "mission" campaign consisting missions that start at different times?

[Mars Exulte]

@flagrum

 

Yes, ED does try, and I'm glad for it. My point that folks keep missing, is exclusion of this capability is a design decision, not a 'impossibility'. None of the stuff about satellites you just said matters either. The day passes in 1/4 the time or the satellites orbit four times as fast, it doesn't matter.

 

There ARE NO stars, there ARE NO satellites. They're values assigned to an equation somewhere. Our computer is a calculator and the game is millions of lines of code. It does and can do whatever it's programmed to do. They could reverse gravity, they could make a Flanker fly like a B-52 or vice versa, and they could accelerate the day/night cycle without necessarily having to alter the physics of the known universe while solving great mysteries. It's all just equations, and they don't have to be linked if they don't choose to link them.

 

THAT is my point, which I'll reiterate. That it wasn't done doesn't mean it could not be, and NO it would not necessarily break the game in doing so unless it was unnecessarily hard coded that way.

[shagrat]

Yes, I know. All very good. And no, that is not a hard block on the concept except DCS does not currently allow it. All that is still applicable whether the days are 24 hours long or ten minutes long. Completely and utterly irrelevant. Time is an arbitrary concept, and in a game is no more than a variable that can be altered.

 

DCS does not allow for accelerated Day/Night cycles.

 

There is no fundamental 'road block' to the concept beyond them having chosen not to do it. They could have configured the days to be six hours long in the first place and it would not alter the physics in the game.

 

Completely separate notions.

 

I'm a big fan of the series, but I have involuntary cringes when people start throwing 'simulation' around like it means anything more than a genre

 

Hell you can even do a 'fade to black' and teleport forward in time, for that matter. It's arbitrary. DCS doesn't do it for the same reason it doesn't do lots of things : Because it's at heart a twenty year old game that has received a long series of facelifts and botox injections, cleaning up wrinkles and trying to look nice ) There's still a lot of old code and old concepts under the hood.

 

 

I distinctly remember suggesting the ability to change camos in mission, and was shouted down 'because unrealistic'. Fast forward a few months to the UI facelift and that's exactly what we got. Time warp? Suspension of disbelief? And don't get me started on the ten minute repair and reloads.

 

It's a game. A detailed, highly complex game, but a game, and is not magically exempt of the common principles that apply to ALL bits of code.

The point was more that in multiplayer you would deliberately break all means of navigation and coordinated strikes for aircraft that require map & stopwatch.

So from a "game mechanics" point of view it can cause a lot of problems. In addition you would need two or more timers for the worlds "cycle" and for the hmm, let's take the ballistics, and object coordination, so that would reduce fps, again...

 

But I have a proposition for a workaround.

In multiplayer you can have the server start another mission after one has ended.

So build a first part (say RECON target) at dawn. Now have this mission end if all players landed successfully and mission is accomplished. Then automatically load part II starting with a text "...after 8 hours on the Airfield." There is even a way to deactivate the sanitize function in DCS to store info on the drive and load it afterwards (that activates the file access. Careful this comes with a risk!).

Search for MBots dynamic campaign(?) he uses this to store states of forces and achievements, IIRC.

 

That is currently the closest, you can get. Basically a time warp mid-mission.

 

Never tested this myself, so more like a concept / idea.

Edited March 11, 2018 by shagrat

[Flagrum]

@flagrum

 

Yes, ED does try, and I'm glad for it. My point that folks keep missing, is exclusion of this capability is a design decision, not a 'impossibility'. None of the stuff about satellites you just said matters either. The day passes in 1/4 the time or the satellites orbit four times as fast, it doesn't matter.

Yes, it is a design decision, but not "just because" - as it actually DOES matter.

 

The simulation is a set of equations. A BIG set of equations, that describe the various aspects that we see and experience in DCS. If the satelites move four times as fast, they certainly will not be hurled into deep space - as that is probably not simulated at all. But there is a good chance that something like that could mess up the equations dealing with GPS and navigation systems. You just can't change one variable of an (set of) equation(s) and expect the other side of it to stay the same (i.e. stay correct).

 

Maybe it is possible to find a different set of equations that can handle that - by incorporating correction factors and whatnot. But THAT would be additional work and therefore an actual design decision that would have to be made. It would not be "just a tweak", but a different simulation.

[sslechta]

As far as i remember the open conflict server was doing this. And as sslechta said, aerobatics server is doing it.

 

Aerobatics Server is doing it in real time, there is no acceleration or deceleration of time settings. I was trying to explain that it's a 4 hour mission time and the end of that 4 hours is set for sunset. They just had to set the mission start time to be 4 hours before sunset. That's how it comes out OK at the end of the mission.