Unidata IDV

[Rockwell Schrock]

In searching for an app to display downloaded NEXRAD images from the past, I ran across this program, Unidata's Integrated Data Viewer. I figured I'd mention it because a forum search revealed no results on this app. It has a motherlode of online data (METARs, models, soundings, etc.) you can access and you can view locally stored data, too. It's wicked powerful, and the price is right (free!).

Anyway, I thought you-all might be interested in it. I can tell I'm going to spend many hours tinkering with it (actually, I already have!).

Sorry if this sounds like a plug... It's not, I'm just really impressed with this app.

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

How does it run for you? It acted like a memory hog on my machine (2.4ghz, 1gig ram).

Aaron

 

[Rockwell Schrock]

It mostly runs fine on my computer, but for some displays (I think 3D ones) is takes forever to process and I have to kill the app. But other than that it runs okay. It slows down a bit if I turn on county borders for the whole U.S., but I guess that can be expected.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

I've used IDV before too... Overall, I think it's a very capable program, as you can do a lot of pretty intriguing displays (from archived or real-time data). In fact, I used IDV for Level 2 radar viewing before I found GRLevel2. Unfortunately, IDV is a huge resource hog, and some of the operations take a long time to load...

 

[KMcCallister]

When I run IDV, the biggest part of the memory/processor seems tied to the fact that this thing runs in Java. I'm running it right now and it is using 337MB of memory running some animations. It is a huge resource hog, but it does some things that I don't you can do with any other software in Windows.

And like others, I started using GRW88 for level 2 instead of IDV. Much, much easier.

 

[Blake Naftel]

Unidata IDV proved useful when creating 3D graphics/or loops for presentations; and had endless possibilities integrating net data; yet I felt the software package wasn't user-friendly enough. I would assume the longer one toys around with IDV, as with anything, the greater the ease; but would not use it as a graphical display module while on-chase.

..Blake..