We would like to add more detailed roads to RadarLab HD, but that is a lot of data to load and we haven't come up with a good way to allow this. It might be an option some time in the future.
I would think the best way is when you install the product. I would likely limit the liberal re-installs of the product. Seems currently it detects a new version is available and auto installs that whenever you start the product. It is probably better to detect it and ask if you want to update to the latest version. That way you don't get an update in the middle of the field on low bandwidth while trying to just get a radar update.
Anyway if you do it as part of the install, or even as a separate step such as when you get the gps version - or even just as a separate update as roads or maps - I think it makes more sense than trying to grab everything online while chasing and trying to switch to a different radar station. Keep in mind we often have fairly low speed connects in the field and this has to be quick and light. With Threatnet you install the roads one time and they are there.
On another note, I'm starting to think tab browsing in Radarlab Hd is the way to go. In other words provide many of the products separately on tabs. These tabs would then be loaded and remain, and can quickly be selected and switched to for comparison. I was just checking this out with the severe weather out toward Georgia. I'll download 8 frames of Storm Relative Motion and then I'll toggle back to Base Reflectivity. Each time - even though the data hasn't changed, it has to reload (probably re-download the data) - this very slow. Compare that to Grlevelx or Swift. I believe both of these just toggle to the other tab immediately. This effectively allows you to have both (or more than 2) products always available. By toggling between multiple screens with all screens positioned the same way you can quickly compare features such as reflectivity signature to velocity signature for detecting tornadic areas. Other products such as Vil, composite, etc are also useful this way, Or even different level scans of a product. The advantage of tabs is they can quickly be user selected or possibly even selected back and forth using a tab key. Currently Radarlab uses selectable check boxes. These could be fairly quick if the data is immediately displayed or if you can cursor between each and redisplay the already downloaded current data, but right now the cursor key doesn't work this way with Radarlab Hd.
The way I see it you either need the tabs, or you need to keep the data resident in memory and when a user requests a different product for comparison the tool checks to see if the data is old. If it is, it goes ahead and grabs the latest data. If it isn't it just quickly displays what it has.
So, to summarize...load the maps separately at install, limit inadvertent installs in the field, keep radar data resident for quick display with possible tab browsing as solution.
As for the Storm Track MESO information, you can read more about the change
here. At the top of the third page is where it talks about the strength rank for the MDA.
Interesting..So will 3DCO, UNCO no longer be used? I thought that had more to do with the symmetry of the rotation signature rather than just strength. If so seems we would be perhaps losing some information. However, it's pretty cool they changed the algorithm to only identify MESO (now MDA's) which are co-located within 20km of a SKIT. Guess I need to remember the range 1-25.
