Uh ok... that conversation just took a turn for the wierd. Dum dee dum.

Dub


"nexrad" wrote in message ...
Anthony,

Good to hear that there will be a new release to StormPredator with "full
screen rectangular mode". My 14 day trial ends tomorrow, will I be able to
re-eval the new release?

Thanks and excited to see the latest from you.


"Anthony - IntelliWeather" wrote in message
om...
Hello-

I'm the author of the StormPredator program, and I thought I'd write
in to clear up the issue of why we decided to go with a round
presentation rather than square, plus add a few more thoughts.

First, all radar data/imagery is "round" to start with, even though it
may be presented rectangularly on web imagery. Our experience with our
earlier version of the program DesktopDoppler taught us that in the
hands of the layman, this could be a liability.

You see, the corners of the NEXRAD images produced by the NWS contain
no data, as its automatically limited by the beam max radius when the
picture is created from range-azimuth raw data to mapped cartesian
coordinates...and what we discovered, was that people can get a false
sense of security if the areas of interest occur in those corners of
the rectangle- because they don't see cells there.

Since I've worked on WSR-3, WSR-57, and WSR-74 radars with PPI
displays, I thought this would be a good opportunity to speak to the
true lineage of analog radar by solving the presentation problem
above, as well as being able to offer some true "analog" style
features in a circular presentation, for example range rings which can
be brought up by pressing ALT-R. The circular look was a combination
of analog retro mimicking a real PPI display and the need to solve the
corners problem for the layman.

The chief tech at Wallops Island NWS satellite uplink (Dennis Cope)
was so impressed by the circular presentation of StormPredator, he
mounted a SVGA monitor to an instrument panel with a circular cutout
so he could have a PPI display like he was used to seeing!

Custom overlays can be substituted for the range rings, and custom
basemaps can be put under the radar data too. Plus we have a distance
tool and an path/ETA wizard too.

A new release coming soon will have the option of displaying a full
screen rectangular mode for those that want it. BTW you can make the
side control panel go away by pressing the SPACE bar, and be left with
just the "scope" onscreen.

Also, there is are quite a number of features enabled by hotkeys which
you may have missed, such as the national NEXRAD radar summary (F5)
and many others...see the Help button for the hotkey list.

The other thing we wanted to do with this program is to reach a
broader market of weather enthusiasts that just the true "met-head"
types. While I'll be the first to agree that StormLab has a plethora
of features, in the hands of the layman, they can be confusing...you
practically have to have a Unisys WSR88D operators license to run it.
Now thats fine if you want to do research and know what you are doing,
but if you are just a regular person whos interested in meteorology,
we think that StormPredator is more user friendly because you don't
have to know about all the WSR88 modes to interpret it and run it.

The other problem that StormLab has is that they are using the FTP
connection into the NWS server, and that FTP connection is now being
overloaded to the point that StormLab is considering making their
program a separate subscription connection...because of complaints
about update speed....actually I hope they do, because the FTP service
is lower bandwidth and was designed for professional use, not for
commercial programs to use.

We chose to use the high bandwidth publicly available HTTP
connections, which are designed to handle huge traffic generated by
the public, thus sparing the overloaded FTP connection for those who
really need it for true professional use. StormPredator, even on a
modem updates its images in just a few seconds because the HTTP NWS
server is so much faster and has so much more bandwidth.

I hope this answers your concerns. I welcome any and all comments on
the program which can be downloaded at http://www.stormpredator.com We
have a users forum there in Tech Support as well.

Best regards
Anthony Watts
IntelliWeather


(Dubs) wrote in message
om...
Hello, I was quite excited to download a new program called Storm
Predator. I got it off downloads.com and its basically a program
which downloads Nexrad doppler radar data and has a bunch of nifty
utilties. If you click on a spot on the radar map it will tell you
all sorts of details about the rain intensity on that pixel. It lets
you guage distances on the map by click and dragging a line, and even
lets you calculate ETA of the storm based on distance and storm speed.

This stuff is all pretty cool, but I'm not completely satisfied with
the program. My main gripe is the interface, which is based on a
circular radar screen, which should be a square window. The buttons
are all arrayed around the round screen and it ends up trying to look
so cool that its not practical.

I was wondering if there are any other programs out there that
download nexrad data and allow you to analyze it? Any other cool
weather programs?

Thanks,
Dub