20050617: IDV 1.2 Release Candidate 1 available for testing

>From: Steve Aulenbach <address@hidden>
>Organization: NCAR
>Keywords: 200506172008.j5HK8pZu002787 IDV flight track

Hi Steve-

>Very, very nice stuff. I added an ACME flight track (as a trajectory  
>with a track control), topography, cities, etc. and everything worked  
>very smoothly. Occasionally, I notice some, but not all, of the  
>displays are not refreshing. If I can see a pattern, I'll submit a  
>report.

Okay, we have not seen this, but please let us know if you
can pin it down.  That's why it's a Release Candidate. ;-)

>I do have a very low priority question, though. Can you point me to the  
>documentation that shows me how to animate the flight through time ala  
>what you showed at the EOL retreat? I can't seem to find it anywhere.  
>The user's guide does talk about animation  
>(http://my.unidata.ucar.edu/content/software/IDV/release/idv_1.2rc1/ 
>docs/userguide/ui/Animation.html#levelanimation) but my time animation  
>control does not show any times at all. Clicking on the VCR controls  
>does not do anything. Could it be that only "one" time is being loaded  
>for the entire aircraft flight track? Should i be using another display  
>type? If so, what?

Yes, this is not intuitive.  At the present time, the way to
do this is to load in the track as a point data plot as well 
as a track.  You will see both choices listed.  Select the
Point Data choice in the Fields panel of the selector and 
chose the display type of Point Data Plot. You'll need
to create a stationmodel for the point plot.  Open the
Station Model Editor through the Edit->Resources->Station Models.
From the editor, use the File->New menu to create a new canvas.
Give it whatever name you want.  Click on the Shape symbol on 
list on the left and then click on the canvas.  That will pop
up the properties dialog.  From the symbol list, pick whichever
symbol you want to use (e.g. 3-D airplane).  You can also use
the other tabs to color the airplane by a particular value, 
scale it by another value, or rotate it.  For example, you
could rotate the airplane by the heading (as long as you are
in a lat/lon map system).  Just type in the name of the
heading variable from the file (right click on the Data Source
name in the Field Selector and select the Show Details... item
from the pop-up menu to list the variable names).

With both the times of the point obs and the track displayed,you
can then use the track control to show the whole track, or just
the last N minutes from the current time step. You can also
decimate the step interval from the Station Model Control.

That should get you started.   If you have more questions, let
me know.

Have a good weekend.

Don
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