I just press the T key or Shift+T when I open up a flight someplace at night or at a time the shadows don't appeal to me. In a matter of a few seconds I can cycle thru the 24 hours and chose the light and shadows of my choice. I seldom ask the locals what time it is, heck, I can't speak but 2 languages anyway. ha. 
Regards,
Ray
Take a look at The world Clock World Clock. There is a section where you can make a list of cities that show local time. Comes in handy because I love night flying.
I can live with what we have, but I think Roy's proposal has something. After all, other simulators allow a local time setting as well, and probably for a reason.
Kind regards, Michael
My Apple Watch works for me.
Regards,
Ray
I was looking for a way that I didn't have to remove my VR HMD and go to a 3rd party website just to set time-of-day. As PMB says, local time is in competitor sims. And "local" is where you are flying, no matter where your home is. 
I think local time should be default. It is quite odd the way it is now, specially for a sim like this. I have to add though that I also use T all the time to set the preferred light, colors and shadows. I hardly ever know at what time I am flying. Often is is quite early or late because the colors are a bit bland during the day, specially in those ‘sandy’ regions.
The decimal clock will make things easier.
I also do what Ray does (use T & Shft-T) and I mapped them to a rocker switch on my throttle so I can adjust the time while wearing my VR headset.
Local time can't be default because that is affected by where you are fling to and from and mess up the settings. Even MSFS based sims seem to use the UTC time as a value, if you switch the location from USA to Europe you are changing local time but UTC stays the same. Same with Aerofly.
What I think would be good is having symbols of the sunrise and sunset on the slider, so that you know, for your current aircraft position, when you can expect the daylight or night time or sunset and sunrise. That would be a good compromise I think.
Just set it to 1500 or 1600Z, this will give you sunlight on the Westcoast and Eastcoast of the US. and Switzerland at the same time.
if you switch the location from USA to Europe you are changing local time but UTC stays the same
Hm... that's not entirely true afaik. In FSX/P3D you always set the local time by default: when you set up a flight you pick a time and a location and when the flight has started the time you set will always be the local one. So if I set 12.00 (noon) and then pick San Francisco and then start the flight I will be in SF at noon. If I set noon and then pick LOWI and start the flight I willl be in LOWI at noon. Quite logical.
When you switch location during a flight the time stays as it is indeed by default (so if you change from SF at noon to LOWI while flying it won't be noon in LOWI) however, this is optional! You can select an option to keep the exact same local time (in P3D it is at the bottom of the location selection screen) and so in that case even while in flight going from SF to LOWI will keep you flying at noon.
The suggested compromise would be nice but I still think being able to simply set the local time is the most logical thing to do. If other sims can do it, AFS2 should be able to do it too. 
I am 100% sure specially newbies are totally confused by how time is taken care of in AFS2 right now.
I also do what Ray does (use T & Shft-T) and I mapped them to a rocker switch on my throttle so I can adjust the time while wearing my VR headset.
Same here
Hm... that's not entirely true afaik. In FSX/P3D you always set the local time by default: when you set up a flight you pick a time and a location and when the flight has started the time you set will always be the local one. So if I set 12.00 (noon) and then pick San Francisco and then start the flight I will be in SF at noon. If I set noon and then pick LOWI and start the flight I willl be in LOWI at noon. Quite logical.
When you switch location during a flight the time stays as it is indeed by default (so if you change from SF at noon to LOWI while flying it won't be noon in LOWI) however, this is optional! You can select an option to keep the exact same local time (in P3D it is at the bottom of the location selection screen) and so in that case even while in flight going from SF to LOWI will keep you flying at noon.
The suggested compromise would be nice but I still think being able to simply set the local time is the most logical thing to do. If other sims can do it, AFS2 should be able to do it too.
Nah, if your default flight is in Seattle then your local computer time (e.g. daytime) is used, even though I am in Europe and that would mean Seattle would actually have night time. But it sets local time at default airport to your current local time. Then if I switch to Europe before the flight it will still load night time. That's why I had to change the default flight to another location, otherwise I'd never have the correct local time at the airport I want to fly at. So it would have been better to set the current UTC instead of current local time. At least my FSX gold edition does that, don't like that is always changes my flight time. But even then, I prefer to fly at daytime, even if my local time says 11pm. Now I have to select that I don't want local time every time I want to use the simulator. I don't like that, I prefer having the time where I left of, maybe with an option to set it to real time (current UTC), sunset, sunrise, mid-day or night.
This is all very confusing and its not as elegant, which is the reason why Aerofly just keeps the time that you set it at and it only increments it during your flight. Then if you start the sim later that day you will still have the time that your set it at which I think is much more intuitive if you want to continue your flight for example.
I think what people want is for the time to be set to what their local time is for wherever they fly. So if it is 2:00pm local, they want it to be 2:00pm if they are flying in Budapest. I think maybe folks have been talking passed each other.
Unfortunately the built in time format isn't going to change in Aerofly for now. It may be looked at down the road when we update the flight planning systems but for now it's just not a very high priority.
Nor should it be, in the grand scheme of things.
As an amateur astronomer, I do wish the night would reflect different season. Your stars are by far the best, so it would be very cool to see all the different seasons reflected. But again, not a high priority.
Nor should it be, in the grand scheme of things.
As an amateur astronomer, I do wish the night would reflect different season. Your stars are by far the best, so it would be very cool to see all the different seasons reflected. But again, not a high priority.
Aerial imagery+different/changing seasons=many mornings around table to design
Some Confucius for you.
A Man can dream...
It may be looked at down the road when we update the flight planning systems but for now it's just not a very high priority.
Fully understood. It isn't a big deal and I don't want IPACS to spend time on little deals. However, your comment made me think about the ATC that is being worked on: doesn't that require a new flight planning system? It seems the flight planning won't be worked on anytime soon? But maybe I am reading to many things in what you say. (No one really know what features ATC will bring us...)
Fully understood. It isn't a big deal and I don't want IPACS to spend time on little deals.
Please don't read into my comment
We will provide everyone information regarding ATC once we have enough solid information that isn't going to be changed internally.
