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Some ideas

Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2013 1:18 pm
by A-L-E-X
I just got the program and am super excited about it, but also have some suggestions about ideas or improvements:

1) I also have starry night pro plus which is a desktop planetarium program, and one suggestion I have is to show all the constellations just as they would look from a specific location at a specific time. I would also like to see this with the planets and moons, so I can see transits, eclipses, phases, etc.

2) another suggestion is to fix the snow cover issue. We have a lot of days here where it's cold and dry and no snow on the ground and there should not be snow shown on the ground simply because it's below freezing. Im sure this can be done as most NWS stations also report snow cover, so if there is no snow cover, none should be shown on the landscape image.

3) please allow the input of official NWS airport locations (METAR) directly, rather than names of towns, as I am trying to use the program to keep track of the snowiest, coldest and warmest places on the planet. I have 58 locations saved to the program so far. I also want highest and lowest temps, snowfall amounts, etc, displayed and saved as in number 4 below

4) as an addendum to number 3, please allow data to be saved in excel format for each of these stations

5) I have another program (wxexchange from ambient weather and weather1) which allow info to directly be downloaded from any wunderground weather station onto the program for display and I would like the option of adding other peoples' weather stations to my yowindow, they also list the sky conditions and such so this should not be difficult to do. I would also like to save these data in excel format like number 4 above.

6) maybe in the future, like starry night pro plus allows, you can have 360 degree immersive panoramas that show the whole landscape in an image, as well as the whole sky with the constellations, sun, moon, etc, with accurate sky conditions and such (which is going beyond SNPP)? This would make this the complete package for weather and casual astronomy!

Re: Some ideas

Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2013 10:13 pm
by Don
A-L-E-X wrote:there should not be snow shown on the ground simply because it's below freezing.
3) please allow the input of official NWS airport locations (METAR) directly,
Hello Alex,
You can override the current season and change the METAR station for your locations under "Location Properties."
Location_Properties.jpg
Location_Properties.jpg (42.38 KiB) Viewed 18198 times
Don

Re: Some ideas

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2013 12:36 am
by A-L-E-X
thanks Don! do you think you could implement the snow cover option? Like, if it is cold but the ground is bare, there shouldnt be snow on the ground, you could obtain snowcover data from the official airport weather observations and use it to change the appearance (or disappearance) of snow on the ground :-P you could even use it to show snow when it is above freezing and there is still snow on the ground at the airport!

would the astronomy options be too much to implement or is that doable to show the constellations and planets and moons accurately? what about annual meteor showers?

and if you could do a 360 degree panorama we could scroll around in we could also zoom in and out.

Going back and forward in time (through step mode) you could display historical weather data from the past and the future (too far ahead of forecasts and you could just show climatological averages), both statistically and graphically :-)

Re: Some ideas

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2013 9:38 am
by Don
A-L-E-X wrote:thanks Don! do you think you could implement the snow cover option? Like, if it is cold but the ground is bare, there shouldnt be snow on the ground, you could obtain snowcover data from the official airport weather observations and use it to change the appearance (or disappearance) of snow on the ground :-P you could even use it to show snow when it is above freezing and there is still snow on the ground at the airport!

would the astronomy options be too much to implement or is that doable to show the constellations and planets and moons accurately? what about annual meteor showers?

and if you could do a 360 degree panorama we could scroll around in we could also zoom in and out.

Going back and forward in time (through step mode) you could display historical weather data from the past and the future (too far ahead of forecasts and you could just show climatological averages), both statistically and graphically :-)
I'm just a moderator for this board and a YoWindow user like yourself. Only Pavel and his team can decide which features YoWindow will have. They do take suggestions into consideration however.

Don

Re: Some ideas

Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2013 9:56 am
by A-L-E-X
Thanks, one other question I had was, is there any sort of limit to how many locations one can save into the program so that they come up whenever the program is started? Currently I have 70 added. If I change the weather station association with a city, will it always be the way I set it unless I change it again?

The reason I ask is that I find that sometimes when I add new locations they do not save and other times they do, this is very confusing lol. I thought I was hitting a location limit but tonight when I tried to add more it worked, and now I am up to 70. I hope these locations do not disappear because I have to manually add them back and then reassociate them with the weather stations (airports) I want them associated with. Is there a backup file for this so if the locations do delete for whatever reason I can quickly load them all (along with the new airport associations) without having to manually input everything? Thanks for your help!

Re: Some ideas

Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2013 10:11 am
by Don
A-L-E-X wrote:Thanks, one other question I had was, is there any sort of limit to how many locations one can save into the program so that they come up whenever the program is started? Currently I have 70 added. If I change the weather station association with a city, will it always be the way I set it unless I change it again?

The reason I ask is that I find that sometimes when I add new locations they do not save and other times they do, this is very confusing lol. I thought I was hitting a location limit but tonight when I tried to add more it worked, and now I am up to 70. I hope these locations do not disappear because I have to manually add them back and then reassociate them with the weather stations (airports) I want them associated with. Is there a backup file for this so if the locations do delete for whatever reason I can quickly load them all (along with the new airport associations) without having to manually input everything? Thanks for your help!
I don't know if there is a limit. I think your cities and other options are saved in "Your User Name Here"\AppData\Roaming\YoWindow\options.xml, so that should be the file you would need to backup.

Don

Re: Some ideas

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2013 9:57 am
by A-L-E-X
Thanks! Is that under the program files folder for Yowindow or in my documents and settings folder (I have windows xp)?

One other question, does Yowindow use Java at all or only Flash? The reason I ask is because there was a major Java update tonight.

Re: Some ideas

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2013 10:04 am
by A-L-E-X
and one other question, would that XML file also save any editing I have done to airports associated with the locations? Sometimes I removed the default airport and associated the location with a different one.

Re: Some ideas

Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 10:36 am
by par
Hey!

All YoWindow settings are stored in options.xml

No, YoWindow does not use Java at all.

Re: Some ideas

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2017 5:52 pm
by hypernova
Thanks Par! So there isn't/won't be any kind of limit on the number of locations saved, even in the free version?