DateTime.Now is incorrectly returning UtcNow in .NET 4.6 version

This bug was already reported here: https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/is...tc-time-regardless-of-your-current-local-time

Datetime.Now returns UTC times instead of local user times.

I'd like to know if there is any estimated time of fix for this, as it's a major bug for us and breaks all our features relying on local user time. We're too far in using .NET to go back now. Quite surprised that it was reported back in August and not addressed yet, and that so few have voted on the issue.

Is there any workaround that people have tried which have worked for them? I'm thinking if you grab the lat/long off the device using LocationServices, then use TimeZoneInfo to get the UTC offset, you can essentially calculate the local time, HOWEVER this requires extra location permissions on device which is really not ideal, and additionally this local time needs to be calculated before any other code is initialised.

Advice is appreciated.

 

That is probably on purpose because there are many people abusing DateTime.Now.
Everytime you call it, it calls into system methods to convert the time to local time, which takes a while.
With getting UTC time the method (the getter) is a lot faster, and you can still add your "utc to local" offset.
So it's likely a performance thing.

You can likely use the system language or culture info or something to get the right timezone as well instead of having to go by long/lat, but I'm not so sure about that.

 

You may try this

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.datetimeoffset?view=netframework-4.6

 

The problem is that the TimeZone of the device always reports as UTC so you can't find out what the correct TimeZone is to even do it manually. This also makes the .ToLocalTime() fail since the local time has been set to UTC.

 

Unfortunately this makes Unity's .Net 4.6 completely unusable. We just went through a migration for 4.6 upgraded a lot of 3rd party libraries and began using some of the new syntax only to find that our iOS notifications all schedule on UTC time. Now we could hack around this using our own native notifications plugin, or offset the timing knowing that DateTime.Now is messed up. However since iOS Notification Services is a Unity first party supported system, and it broke with this change, my trust has been broken. I cannot trust that there aren't other places that Unity is using DateTime.Now internally that are causing issues that haven't surfaced to us.

I expect that the official answer will be to hide behind the "Experimental" tag on .Net 4.6, but it seems like with every Unity upgrade something fundamental breaks.

 

It definately seems like something as fundamental as DateTime.Now should stay the same in 4.6 as in 3.5, pretty crazy that this was even allowed to do out the door as it was bound to break tons of stuff.

 

Hmm... to me, "Experimental" (or "Alpha") means "don't use for anything that has a ship date or needs to actually function any time soon, because you don't know what's broken nor can you know when it will get fixed." Heck, something with that label might even get cancelled.

So, while I fully agree with your frustrations on the matter, I just don't see it as an issue of trust, or breaking an implicit agreement, or whatever you want to call it.

That all being said, it's thanks to people & teams like yours that this stuff gets found and prioritized correctly, and it sucks that you have to pay for it in time & money.

 

I'm trying to use this, as Unity 2018.1.0b8 is still broken (Bug report submitted).

I wanted to see the main method and all the print outs. So I did this:
private void Awake()
{
Unity.CustomTimeZoneExample.Main(new string[1]);
}

MissingMethodException: Attempted to access a missing method.
Unity.CustomTimeZoneExample.Main (System.String[] args) (at Assets/Scripts/Objects/TimeZoneInfoWorkaround.cs:46)
Main.Awake () (at Assets/Scripts/Main.cs:37)

Using the Unity Editor OSX.

 

related to this, can you confirm the fix also handle the "dlopen" bug related to DateTime.Now() ?
(see https://forum.unity.com/threads/2018-1-0b7-webgl-builds-fail-to-start.518588/ )

any ETA ?

 

couldn't find a ticket, except the forum link above.
so i made one (on its way). will bump when i got the ticket entry.

i made an empty project (last beta 2018.1.0b9), add a gameobject with a simple script that calls DateTime.Now in Awake function.
switch to .Net 4.6 in the player settings and made a WebGL version.

and got the exception raised.

Thx for your time.

 

@mkderoy
https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/datetime-dot-now-raises-an-exception-in-webgl-player

 

@mkderoy
Still present in unity 2020 and 2019. IL2CPP, .net4.X. Windows and Android.