Weathertap Radarlab HD

[Jody Radzik]

I just downloaded version 9 and find that the road and country boundary lines are much too thick. There needs to be an option to make these lines thinner. It's very useful to have the boundaries and road layers, but with lines this thick the map is practically unreadable.

 

[ssimmons]

They can't be much thinner. The County Boundaries and US & State Roads overlays are both two pixels thick. I know it gets pretty busy the more things you overlay. That is why I separated the Interstates from the US & State Roads. At the higher level you can turn the Interstates on and as you zoom in, the US and State Roads become more useful. I have not changed the line thickness from the previous version. On the previous versions you only had a Roads overlay. This displayed only the Interstates until you zoomed to the forth zoom level. At that point the Interstates and the US and State Roads were both displayed.

 

[Jody Radzik]

Got it. I guess I wish the roads and boundaries were one pixel wide at the base magnification. I agree that the width is fine when you are zoomed into the image area.

 

[ssimmons]

I'll experiment with the roads and boundaries thickness at higher (meaning farther away) zoom levels to see if I can make them a little better. It does make the map unreadable when you have a lot of them turned on at a higher zoom level.

 

[ssimmons]

Just put Revision 10 out. I made some more modifications to the Watches, Warnings and Advisories. Please make sure you are using this new version. Because of this update, now the previous versions will not display the WWA text when you click on a WWA area. These WWAs are going to be the death of me!

Thanks.

 

[Greg Stumpf]

Still no way to turn off the radar smoothing?

 

[ssimmons]

The radar images are built on our servers with the smoothing. RadarLab HD then downloads the images for display. There is no way to unsmooth the images since RadarLab HD does not do the smoothing.

 

[Greg Stumpf]

Why not turn it off on the servers, or produce a set of unsmoothed images on the server and offer a choice on the display?

 

[ssimmons]

Hey Bill Tabor, I can't send you any more Private Messages as it says your box is full. Can you PM me your email address. I have a few more questions for you. Thanks.

 

[ssimmons]

Latest RadarLab HD Update

Version 1.0 Revision 11 has now been uploaded to the weathertap.com site. here are the changes:

1. Storm tracks can now be filtered either manually or automatically. Before, you could only filter them manually. Now you can set up some parameters that each storm track must meet if it is to be displayed. This automatic filter will be applied to all currently loaded radar images as well as new images that come in by auto refresh or when the reload button is pressed. You can set the automatic filtering options by clicking on the "Storm Table" button. You can turn automatic filtering on by default by clicking on the "Automatic Filtering" option in the settings window.

2. The Roads, Interstates, County and State boundaries are now plotted using user defined colors and sizes. You can set these by clicking on the "Settings" button.

3. Last and most important, we have found that we cannot rely on Java Web Start to detect newer versions of RadarLab HD and download them. We have not had good success with this. Therefore, I have put some code in this version to automatically check for a new version of RadarLab HD every time it is launched. If a newer version is found, it is downloaded and a message box will prompt you that a newer version has been downloaded. So from this version on, you should not have to delete your Java cache to make sure you have the latest version of RadarLab HD.

To see if Java Web Start has downloaded this latest version of RadarLab HD, click on the RadarLab HD logo in the upper right corner of the program. The version number should read "V1.0 Revision 11". If it does not, then you need to delete your Java cache using the directions supplied in post number 14 of this thread.

Thank you,
Stacey

 

[Jody Radzik]

Please add the velocity scans next. It would make RadarLab HD sooooo much more useful as an in-the-field chasing tool.

 

[ssimmons]

We're working on adding more radar scans as well as GPS tracking. I wanted to get this latest revision out mainly because of the code added to check for a new version of RadarLab HD. Actually, the GPS coding is almost finished. It is working on windows based systems, but we're just trying to get it to work on a Mac now.

 

[Jim Rood]

ssimons, used RadarLab HD and GRlevel3 trials and prefer the RadarLab HD. I have not ordered for two reasons: No GPS interface and my default settings change everytime I change radar sites. Is this common in the trial version and will it correct itself with the real version (I hope)? Will the GPS interface work with my MS S&T puck? Finally, do you have an approx. date the GPS will be offered?

Thanks,
-jim.

 

[Robert Dewey]

I like it as too, but I'm afraid the option to turn off smoothing (or used un-smoothed images) really limits me.

 

[ssimmons]

Jim,

To answer your questions about RadarLab HD:

1. Hopefully, the GPS interface will be completed in a week or so. It all depends on how the Mac testings goes. We may have to offer the GPS interface for Windows only, but I hope not. The GPS will work with the Microsoft Street and Trips puck, that is what I used during development. It will work with any GPS device that outputs in the NMEA standard.

2. Yes, the default settings will work as they are designed when you subscribe. The problem you are seeing with the default settings changing is because the settings are stored in our database per user account. The trial account user name and password is given out to everyone that requests a free trial for that week. So if someone changes the default settings with the trial user name, you will see those changes when you launch RadarLab HD with that same user name.