Greetings, inhabitants of Aeternum!
TLDR:
The in-game day is 60 minutes long.
The in-game night is 30 minutes long.
The sun rises around 50°, and sets around 240° (using the in-game compass).
The zone in which you’re in does not matter.
Introduction:
The question was posed regarding how long the in-game day/night cycle is. Having tried to google it, I did not find a conclusive answer. This is a follow-up from an earlier thread started by PudgyBuns.
Without an answer, I set out to measure it myself and the following is me sharing my method and findings with the rest of the community.
Methodology and collected data:
Firstly I established that the sun set at the same location and at the same time between two distant zones. This was done by me standing in Monarch Bluffs (by the beach) and a company member standing in Shattered Mountain. We both acknowledged that the sun set at the same time (plus-minus some seconds) and at about the same location in the sky. The location in the sky was derived using the in-game compass.
What followed was that I stayed at my location in Monarch Bluffs and measured the duration of the night, and subsequently the duration of the day.
The definition of day in this experiment is the time in which the sun is graphically rendered in the skybox. And the night is defined as the time the sun is not rendered in the skybox.
I measured the night to be about 29 minutes and 50 seconds long, and the subsequent day to be about 59 minutes and 56 seconds long.
This is close enough to 30 minutes for night and 60 minutes for day, to me.
I noted that the sun rises around 50° (using the degrees on the in-game compass), and sets around 240°.
An interesting fact here is that the sun does not actually set by going past the horizon. Instead the sun drops down close to the horizon, and disappears within an instant.
The experiment was carried out over one sunset, one full night cycle, and one full day cycle. It was done on Amenti server, Central EU on 17/12-21 (non-American date format).
Conclusion:
The in-game day is 60 minutes long.
The in-game night is 30 minutes.
The sun rises around 50°, and sets around 240°.
The zone in which you’re in does not matter.
Speculation and recognition:
My personal speculation here is that any deviation from 30/60 minutes is due to a de-sync issue between your client and the server. Due to technical reasons, your client might run slightly ahead or slightly behind. I do not know how often or when the day/night cycle syncs between the client and server.
I recognize that this does not definitely rule out that time does not work differently in different zones as speculated in the previous thread, without testing each zone individually.
Do you have more data to supply? Are your findings different from mine? Feel free to post in this thread!
Kind regards,
Foxtou / Ernst of Ashby
