Canadian radar now supported

Post by **Tim Vasquez** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 5:20 am

Effective with V1.1j, Digital Atmosphere supports Canadian radars via the Radar > Import Radar Images menu option.

Remember that this is a reprocessed image, since virtually all non-US countries do not share their raw radar data. Digital Atmosphere downloads an image, interprets the radar echoes, and georeferences them as shown here.

britbob · Post by **britbob** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 4:36 pm

Great addition, and for an imported image it looks pretty cool

Not a lot you can do about it? the only thing that bugs me is that is imports the distance rings, cities etc abliet rather faded it just looks a little odd.

Great work Tim, along with all the other additions in the latest update. Thanks.

britbob · Post by **britbob** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 5:32 pm

I have a question regarding these images.

As I understand they are importing an image, and overlaying it onto the basemap in DAWS. As the radar data is not raw and not being ingested in DAWS, it should not matter what colour the basemap is? It is only overlaying the radar image on top?

I`ve found that anything but white looks crap. I tried importing an image using my usual light brown land, dark(ish) blue sea. The radar display looks fine for a split second then it just fades out and look awful. Does that make any sense?

Post by **Tim Vasquez** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 11:26 pm

You have total control over how "bad" or how "good" the images look... note that you can control exact colors and thresholds. This was as good as I was able to do within a few minutes... I'd bet another user will be able to optimize the settings much better. The range rings from Canadian radars are indeed a minor problem, but if you are picking up an outer range circle (looks like I might have in the example above), you can easily cut the range back a tad in the config file.

britbob wrote:As the radar data is not raw and not being ingested in DAWS, it should not matter what colour the basemap is?

Which base map? If it's the Digital Atmosphere basemap, it's really not optimized to use black backgrounds (because I rely on simple XOR/AND operators to quickly merge maps for translucency). Does the US WSR-88D radar look fine? If so, I can use those algorithms to handle the Canadian data.

Tim

britbob · Post by **britbob** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 12:53 am

Thanks Tim,

I`ll play around with the .rdy file, correct?

I didn`t explain the basemap issue very well, but I believe it`s because I`m using a dark background and land colour. Here`s two example, because I`m useless at explaining things!!

Upon the initial import of the image I get the following, which is fine
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y61/ma ... r_good.gif

But within a second or two, DAWS completes and I get this
http://photobucket.com/albums/y61/marit ... ar_bad.gif

Post by **Tim Vasquez** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 12:56 am

Yes -- that's a "dark background map" merge problem. Can you try a United States radar on your DA copy and see if it works well wih your maps?

Tim

britbob · Post by **britbob** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 1:49 am

The lower end DBZ colours are a little bit `faded`, but they look a heck of a lot better than the Canadian imported on a dark map.

Post by **Tim Vasquez** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 2:56 am

I went ahead and incorporated the handling of dark maps into V1.1j2, a microbuild which was just released a few minutes ago.

Tim

britbob · Post by **britbob** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 3:13 am

Tim, you are a star

Thankyou.