Interesting..... Same product, different name and same steep price tag for a bunch of eye candy and WSV3 is apparently under the same LLC now offering the same marketing gimmick.
http://911skyalert.com/
I will stick with GR products.Much more reliable and I can do without all the eye candy. I tried WSV3 and it was plagued with the same issues the original WS had and lacked bug fixes and stability updates which this one does too and constantly locks up, freezes and crashes on a i7 4790k chip with 16GB of RAM which is a brand new machine. Also offers no discount to current customers of WS to buy at their leisure so all the previous customers got hosed. That so called "Real-Time Data" is nothing more than MESO SAILS or SAILS_3. WSV3 claims it updates faster than GR3 but according to the comparison chart on the site above FB page it states WSV3 and GR have the same 2.5 min update time. It sometimes took 20 mins to update at times on a 1GB symmetrical connection. I can't imagine what kind of latency it would have on a mobile hot spot. Definitely agree that it is not chaser friendly. If you like over priced eye candy then you would love this if you can get it to run more than a couple hours without it crashing on you which has been reported numerous times by others. IMO I agree with others, it is simply gimmickware and eye candy.
Dear others - thank you for the valuable feedback.
Dear Nick, I've remained quite respectfully open to troubleshooting your absolutely rare and, in fact, almost unheard of issue of the software "constantly locking up, freezing, and crashing" on your new and capable computer. At this point 2+ months after release, after all the bug fixes and enhancements, it seems to me that the only mainstream crashes/lock-ups are occurring with a few types of Placefile commands that use the old WS code, and this is about to be a thing of the past after the Placefile rewrite happens this month.
Let me clear up your perceptions on the "Real-Time data" claim. This is in reference to the Level 2 data, not Level 3. It remains a fact that WSV3 is the only PC product available to display real-time, live, in-progress Level 2 sweep data less than 10 seconds old, consistently beating GR2Analyst's updates as has been confirmed by many users, including one above in this thread.
How is that possible? Is the thing a bandwidth-hog that sits there refreshing the feed every x seconds? Is it doing "fake" visual tricks to make data look new? Not quite. This feat is possible due to three facts:
1. The fact that the Level 2 data stream is offered in real-time (though this amazing opportunity was not capitalized upon by any software prior to WSV3)
2. The fact that WSV3 can display partial, in-progress radar sweeps (GR2Analyst rejects any sweeps that aren't 100% complete in the data stream)
3. The fact that WSV3 has a sophisticated updating/real-time beam prediction algorithm which determines the current, live position of the WSR-88D radar beam from the Level 2 metadata and compares this to the user's selection of radar tilt and product, which means that it will go into LiveScan mode only when the radar is presently updating the selected product.
This means that you will get to see the data come-in for a selected radar sweep basically in real-time with less than 10 or even 5 (sometimes) seconds delay from the echoes being bounced back from the radar.
Proof:
I have heard from GR2Analyst users reporting the same data being displayed in GR2 over 30 or even 60+ seconds later (
one such source).
Matt and Brian also provided confirmation of this above:
I tried it out as well. I was actually surprised that it was consistently beating GR2AE in refreshing the L2 radar scans; sometimes by wide margins.
This is one thing I noticed bigtime. It beat it out by over a minute, sometimes even more. Definitely one of the pros to the software.
In the end, with regards to data usage, if all you have activated is Level 2 data, then WSV3 should wind up using just about the exact same amount as GR2Analyst. When it retrieves the newest packets of radials during LiveScan updates, it is using HTTP byte-range headers only the grab the newest parts of the file.
Since GR2Analyst blindly updates every 60 seconds, it is even conceivable that WSV3 would not even make that many more total HTTP requests during one volume scan despite having real-time data display, since it only updates based off the selected view (i.e. if you are looking at the 0.5 tilt and there's no SAILS activated, it will only expect to go in LiveScan once throughout the volume).
Therefore, your statement that "Real-Time Data" is nothing more than MESO SAILS or SAILS_3" is very much a misunderstanding, since WSV3 is letting you see whatever the radar is doing at any tilt (normal 0.5, SAILS 0.5, or otherwise) before you would be able to see it in any other product.
Level 3 data is a totally different story. You might be able to see GR3 update a couple seconds faster than WSV3 L3. I've also seen the reverse. Any Level 3 data is going to be way worse anyway in delay compared to even GR2Analyst Level 2 data, and especially to WSV3 Level 2 data. I don't think the WSV3 Level 3 system is optimized yet. However, the Level 2 system is the fastest and best you can possibly get on a consumer PC with an internet connection.
Saying that WS customers got "hosed" when they received a free complimentary copy of the software in April 2014 and a large release discount for WSV3 on 12/13 (despite it being opened to everyone) is a criticism you know I disagree with, but I respect and appreciate having your opinion on that.
I too, out of curiosity, asked myself "I can't imagine what kind of latency it would have on a mobile hot spot." Turns out, I was viewing radar data rays
4.5 seconds old (i.e., bounced back into radar -> to my laptop screen in 4.5 seconds) using my Verizon phone 4G connection. Level 2 data on mobile is going to use a ton of data no matter what, but WSV3 should not use that much more than GR2Analyst.
With regards to the SkyAlert application - it's a WSV3 shoot-off massively simplified for Public Safety users that a business partner of mine had the great idea of making. Great product, many people love it - but this community here on Stormtrack definitely wants the bells-and-whistles of WSV3. The "2.5 minute" comparison you are citing is somewhat misleading - that is referring to how often you will see updated data at the base level assuming SAILS, not to the actual latency of the newest data (SkyAlert has a very unique thing I developed called "LiveComposite" which uses the upper level scans at close range to update the near-surface reflectivities, essentially moving forward storms during severe situations before the next surface tilt comes-in. Not something I want in WSV3 because people would call it "fake", which is also my opinion.)
WSV3 is currently being implemented by professionals from TV broadcasting to public-safety, and I know of chasers who also use the product. Version 2 added many chaser-useful features (such as automatic Level 3 vector-based Level 2 SRV, quality velocity dealiasing, a Gate-to-Gate shear product, a large-scale rotation/shear Level 2 product, Level 2 KDP, STP/SCP parameters, etc.). Therefore I do hope you re-evaluate the WSV3 software as it clearly would not be doing so successfully if it were as "gimmicky" as it may appear (flashy interface/graphics, etc.)
Let me know if I can support either with the hardware issue you had or with providing further information.
Best regards,
Paul
