How does the astronomy of Vanadiel work?

[Zarchery]

This is just an idle though. I was in Western Adoulin today around 23:00 game time, late at night. Of course the sky was dark and the stars were shining. Then I went to Aht Urghan... still dark out. How is it that it's still dark on opposite sides of the world?

I know that, programatically, futzing around with time zones would be needlessly difficult, but I'm wondering if you could actually have a world with the same daytime on both sides of the world? Is Vanadiel flat? At night does the sun just hide underneath?

[Hoshi]

I don't have the right answer but I always thought that the part of Vanadiel that we are able to access isn't all that big (maybe like the size of Western Europe). There seem to be lots of parts of it that we can't reach. There's probably a better answer though. :X

[Zarchery]

Well they're pretty clear that we're exploring different continent. Aht Urghan is the Near East, basically like the Middle East in our world, and share a land mass with the Far East (Asia). Ulbuka is the Western continent, like the Americas. The starter areas are like Europe, and the Elshimo region is sort of Africa.

[Hoshi]

Does the time spent traveling those distances support such a far distance? I've never really mathed it out. ^^'

[Selindrile]

Does the time spent traveling those distances support such a far distance? I've never really mathed it out. ^^'

No, but the implication of the word continent vs island does, and the maps do seem to imply it. But the travel time most assuredly does not imply it. But I assume the travel time it -represents- does, think like the vanadiel time>earth time, the duration of a day in gametime is an hour, but NPCs represent the passage of time as more like earth time, distance, and time are representative, not actual.

That said, I suspect they made the passage of time universal across all the continents etc to maintain a more global experience, rather than anything, imagine how annoying it would be to have to say, "Ok the fishing guild in windurst is open from 6-18, and it's 2 in sandoria, so i have to make it there by whatever whatever, just sounds needlessly annoying, I suspect they figured convenience was more important than realism in this case.

[Dreamin]

think you nail it on the head when you refer to time zone in your OP. when you're living in the same time zone, your day and night cycle is the same. so until the game has time zone implemented, we all live in the same 'time' and the entire 'world' all light and dark at the same time regardless of where we're at.

[Arciel]

Theres only 2 plausible explanations to this imo.. and i can easily debunk the first.

From a scientific point of view, the timezones can be the same or close to the same if the land masses of Quon, Mindartia, Aradjiah and Ulbuka are really small relative to the size of Vana'diel. ie. Vana'diel is so big that all 4 continents combined would probably be less than the size of the USA compared to Earth.. which would minimize any difference in solar time. This would also be useful to explain why you can see the same star everywhere, because you're always on the same hemisphere.
This kinda debunked by the game itself tho.. since in the Empyreal Paradox you get to look down at Vana'diel and the Middle Lands pretty much take up 1/3 of the globe?

The other reason is just that its too complicated and simplifying it would be so much easier. Differing timezones is a manmade concept. They could technically stick to a singular timezone for simplicity but the days are still supposed to darken differently based on where you are.. and the stars you see are different as well. I think the fact that they considered the stars and seasons is actually quite impressive for a game this old.

That said i don't think MMOs have a need to take it 1 step closer to reality.