Timezones/global day-night cycle

[Cass Cash]

Depending on the X-Y-Z coordinates, it can be daytime for one player in one part of the world and nighttime for another in a different part of the world based on the rotation of celestial bodies. (not sure if already a feature as the position of the sun can vary depending on coordinates, but basic testing showed the actual time being unaffected)

[Professor Dragon]

Hello @Cass Cash

Welcome to the forums.

Not to try and rain on the parade - but I don't see what this adds or solves.

What would be the benefit that this would introduce? 

A player in one part of the world doesn't impact a player in another part of the world. 
Even if I were to get up and tend to the chickens at dawn in my part of the world, it doesn't impact whatever someone else is doing in a different part.
There are no telephones (unless modded), so you can't even call up a friend and say "I'll meet you at sunrise - my time".
There is no long distance transit, such as trains where timezones first became important, which require accurate server wide timekeeping.

Plus, as far we know, the world is flat.

For the most part, timezones in the real world cause more problems than anything.

So again, welcome. I'm not sure what this adds though.

[EmperorPingu]

I love it! Perhaps the day night cyle is impacted by where the player is on the East-West axis?

@Professor Dragon It's about immersion and feel for realism - having stars or pretty textures doesn't add anything but you wouldn't play without it :v

[MKMoose]

The position of the sun currently depends on the latitude, and polar regions have realistic polar nights and days.

If we were to do the same for longitude, then we would presumably choose the distance between poles (by default it's 100k blocks) or something close to it to indicate the "length of the equator", and travelling that length would change the time of day by 24 hours, landing back in the same time zone.

While it's a fine suggestion for the sake of realism and it should be fairly simple to implement, there are two potential issues:

• if multiple people are in different time zones, then sleeping would be practically impossible in a satisfactory way as the night for one person would be the day for someone else, possibly making the feature more annoying than immersive in those cases,
• the impact of this change would likely be quite minimal, which makes it more difficult to justify it - at 100k blocks equator length, one time zone would be more than 4000 blocks wide, meaning multiple players would have to be at least some 10-20k blocks apart on the horizontal axis to notice a significant difference, making the feature practically irrelevant in singleplayer and unlikely to matter on small servers where people tend to stick together.