Guides - .beat Time System



.beat Time System - New Time Unit
Instead of dividing the virtual and real day into 24 hours and 60 minutes per hour, the Internet Time system divides the day into 1000 ".beats". Each .beat is 1 minute and 26.4 seconds.
New Meridian
Internet Time is based on a new Meridian (as opposed to the Greenwich Meridian). This new Meridian goes through Swatch's office in Biel, Switzerland and is called the BMT Meridian.
BMT - The Reference for Internet Time
BMT, another invention of Swatch, Biel Mean Time, which is linked up to the Central European Winter/Standard time - which is UTC + 1 hour. When it is Midnight in BMT, the Internet Time is @000 .beats, Noon is @500 .beats.
Time Unit Conversions

.beat Unit Conversion Unit .beat Conversion
1 .beat = 0.001 day
1 .beat = 0.024 hours
1 .beat = 1.44 minutes
1 .beat = 86.4 seconds
1 second = 0.01157 .beats
1 minute = 0.6944 .beats
1 hour = 41.666 .beats
1 day = 1000 .beats

.beat Calculator
Internet Time System
  • It uses the normal decimal system, instead of the ancient 24 hour, 60 minute, 60 second system which makes time telling more complicated.
  • .beat time calculations are easy, @345 + 456 .beats = @801, compared to e.g. 3:45:20 + 2 hours, 25 minutes, 45 seconds, where the seconds, minutes and hours must all be added.
  • No need for time zone conversions - the Internet Time is the same everywhere.
Yuji Naka On The .beat System

Sega.com: Another barrier to making a global RPG is different time zones. Please describe how Swatch's .beat system was chosen and implemented.

Yuji Naka: The way Swatch envisioned and created the .beat system was really interesting -- creating one time for the whole Internet. And because Sega is working with Swatch, we wanted to encourage the use of the .beat system.

Sega.com: Were there any difficulties in implementing the .beat system?

Yuji Naka: The .beat system that shows up on the game screen isn't just based on the Dreamcast settings -- it's sent over from the server. And because there are so many different servers in different time zones, it was a bit of a pain to get all of that unified.

In the Dreamcast's case, you can't really assume that the user has set their Dreamcast clock to the correct time. So even if their timer is off, once they connect to the server, the server will correct their time and sync it up with everyone else's .beat time.

If you go to the Swatch homepage, it shows the .beat time there, but that time is based on the internal clock in your PC. So if your PC has the wrong time, the site will show you the wrong time, too. So in that sense, PSO's .beat timer is the most accurate!

PSO & .beat

Heaven Punisher's special will only work on even .beats for 100 .beats until the next sequence of 100 .beats. Example: it will only work at 200 .beats but not .300.