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How long should a day and a night last on your server in real time? Pick your map and desired durations — the calculator uses the real in-game sunrise and sunset times (they change with the calendar date!) and produces the exact serverTimeAcceleration and serverNightTimeAcceleration values, ready to paste into your serverDZ.cfg.
Engine position: 56° N, 30° E (from the game files)
Calculated for today (18.9.2026) — with SystemTime the server starts at the machine's local date and time on every restart.
Recommended: 1–6 hours
Recommended: 10–60 minutes
Presets
serverTimeAcceleration
6.32×
→ your day lasts 2h of real time
serverNightTimeAcceleration
3.6×
night runs 22.75× faster in total → 30m of real time
Full cycle: 2h 30m
Cycles per 24 h: 9.6
Night share: 20%
serverTime = "SystemTime"; serverTimeAcceleration = 6.32; serverNightTimeAcceleration = 3.6; serverTimePersistent = 0;
Sliders and presets for day and night length — including the official server settings (3 h / 40 min).
Real astronomy per map and date: the engine computes sunrise and sunset from each terrain's latitude, and so does this calculator.
Finished serverDZ.cfg block with serverTime, both multipliers and serverTimePersistent — copy with one click.
DayZ runs on a 24-hour in-game clock. serverTimeAcceleration (0.1–64) is a multiplier on that clock: at 6×, four real hours become one full in-game day. serverNightTimeAcceleration (0.1–64) kicks in additionally between sunset and sunrise and multiplies with the first value — at 6× × 4× the night runs 24 times faster than real time.
How many in-game hours are day vs. night depends on the map and the calendar date. Each terrain has a geographic latitude in the game files (Chernarus 56° N, Livonia 54° N, Sakhal 55.5° N) from which the engine computes the sun's path astronomically: mid-June Chernarus gets ~17.5 h of daylight, late December barely 7 h.
The calculator therefore first determines sunrise and sunset for your chosen map and date, then solves for both multipliers: serverTimeAcceleration = in-game daylight ÷ desired day length, and serverNightTimeAcceleration = (in-game night ÷ desired night length) ÷ serverTimeAcceleration. Both values are clamped to the allowed range 0.1–64.
With serverTime = "SystemTime" (or serverTimePersistent = 1) the in-game date follows the calendar — and with it the real day length: summer days are long, winter days short. If you want a constant rhythm, set a fixed serverTime date; a popular choice is a date near an equinox (late March / late September) where day and night are roughly equal.
From sunset to sunrise — the engine switches as soon as the sun is below the horizon. During that phase the effective speed is serverTimeAcceleration × serverNightTimeAcceleration.
Both accept 0.1 to 64. Values below 1 slow time down (0.5 = half speed). On top of that, the engine caps the combined night speed (day × night multiplier) at 64× — we verified this with time-lapse measurements on a real DayZ 1.29 server. The calculator respects both limits and warns you when your desired durations aren't exactly reachable.
The "Official" preset reproduces Bohemia's setup on official servers: roughly a 3-hour day and a 40-minute night. Pick it and copy the generated config block.
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