Cell Reset Mechanism question

[InAComaDial999]

I've seen instructions for resetting all cells in the game that basically go like this:

Open the console and issue the commands:

 

setgs iHoursToRespawnCell 1

setgs iHoursToRespawnCellCleared 1

 

Sleep some amount of time, e.g. 4 hours. Then reapply the vanilla settings:

 

setgs iHoursToRespawnCell 240

setgs iHoursToRespawnCellCleared 720

 

My question is, does this work, and if so why? My understanding is that cell resets in vanilla work like this: when you exit a cell, the current game time is recorded in the cell data. When you re-enter the cell, the exit time is compared to the current time, and if the difference is greater than iHoursToRespawnCell the cell is reset.

 

If the above is the case, then I don't really understand how setting iHoursToRespawnCell to some short value, then sleeping for that many hours, then changing iHoursToRespawnCell back to the default value would do anything. You haven't entered or left any cells, so the timestamp in the cell data would still be the same, and iHoursToRespawnCell is back to its default value.

So, what am I missing here? I understand Skyrim Immersive Creatures uses basically this mechanism behind the scenes when you tell it to issue a global cell reset. Does it do something else as well?

Edited July 28, 2014 by InAComaDial999