This is not what I am seeing.
That's not what I've meant. I haven't said that files date/time on your system are not affected. I said their own date/time is not AFFECTING the decision to updated them or not, which is entirely different.
Each time I start FSX the Couatladdons.ini file in the %APPDATA%\Virtuali, is updated with the date/time from my computer system. I don't have a problem with that since its your file and on each startup of FSX you probably are looking to run a Live Update if one exist.
That's normal in fact.
I keep looking through each of the updated Aircraft.cfg files and do not see anything changed so I am wondering why GSX is changing the file date and time on each start of FSX. This might also relate to why some of us keep getting a live update screen every couple days.
I believe you are looking at the last accessed date, not the last modification date, and that's is NOT changed by GSX, is changed by the file system itself, whenever anything access that file, even if only for reading. So yes, GSX will obviously need to READ all the aircraft.cfg files, to get data like airplane weight, wingspan, exits (if there's no better source of information), your atc airline code, etc.
The file is only read, and it's not modified in any way. The ONLY aircraft.cfg that are changed, not by GSX itself, but by its installer only at install time, are the default 737-800 and 747-400, to fix a bug that prevents their service door from working.
I confirm file date/time of your files are entirely disregarded by GSX when deciding to update a file.
The only time-related information are the timestamps in the [liveupdate] section of the Couatladdons.ini file, if more than 24 hours have passed since the last time an update was made, the program will check again and IF the server reports a different version hash tag, there will be a prompt to do a Live Update. So, if there was something wrong with the timestamp in the Couatladdons.ini, the only effect would be that either Live Update would just check without waiting 24 hours but, to get a Live Update notification, it would be necessary that also the *server* reported there's a different version than the one you have, using the hash tag which is part of the http header, it doesn't have any relationship with date/time on the file on your system.