Windy.com introduces real-time satellite animation

[ivo]

All the satellite images out there, are delivered in 5 to 15 minutes steps.

But can you imagine seamless, real time satellite imagery. It is technically impossible, yet we have tried to do our magic. Tomas, Jindra and Milan came with the concept of interpolation of missing images, that display clouds movement in "real-time" (quotes are necessary, since it is not real-time in fact). But not only that, satellite images are much more detailed and sharper, then in previous version.

See the difference in the video, it is amazing :)

To save bandwidth or spare your notebook battery you can switch off this feature off in Menu > Settings by disabling Smooth satellite animation switch.

This new feature is available on desktop only and we are still not sure, if we port this to our mobile apps, where bandwidth can be a limiting issue.

So enjoy new satellite and stay safe.

Ivo

[idefix37]

@Korina
Wow it's really mesmerizing ! Great job !

[Ahmed A.AS]

This makes sure that there are creative minds behind this -I have to say- GREAT APP ! This is a full luxury feature that no one have ordered or dreamed especially at these critical times that we are living today.

[zDavzBR]

I'm not a meteorologist, so I use Windy mostly for entertainment, and to learn about climate by myself.
Having these awesome updates available for free makes me love Windy more than any other similar apps, and I'm glad to be part of it!
Right now I can't donate because I'm really short in money, but when my situation gets better, I'll help as much as I can.
Keep doing this great work

[weathergeek_z]

Awesome Windy.com is a real awesome and no words to say an awesome app for weather enthusiast like me

[Simon cowell]

Wow the best satellite ever!!!,Now i can watch satellite in smooth mode !!
5 stars !

[Ashishweb]

Hi there, I want to bring your attention to a problem with satellite imagery in windy. At coordinates near to 10N and 85E, there is a cyclone building up at this time and when we click to see the satellite image, there is a sync issue with two different areas of image, more precisely it is the eastern and western side of the image not syncing correctly. Please do something to fix this if it could be.
Thanks

[vsinceac]

To get the worldwide mosaic map, I guess Windy merges images from geostationary satellites with different timestamps (e.g. EUMETSAT images are provided every 15 minutes, HIMAWARI every 15 minutes, GOES every 5 minutes, etc.).

Thus it would be practically impossible to get perfectly synchronized animation, down to the last pixel, on such an area where images with different timestamps are merged.

See also this post.

[Korina]

@Ashishweb Hello, it is not a bug, it is a matter of how the satellite imagery is synchronised.

[TZ]

@Ashishweb Hi, the visualisation is a mosaic of multiple satellite images. At the ~85E meridian there is a boundary between two of them. It is hard to glue the images together. In some cases it is not possible at all.
Images from visible part of the light spectrum are prone to lighting artifacts like scattering in atmosphere or reflections. Especially when one satellite is "looking to the sun" and sees only scattered light near the horizon. Then the picture is completely yellowish on Windy. The other satellite sees the same place from much different angle and in such case does not suffer from the actual light scattering. If you want more homogeneous image, try switching to INFRA or INFRA+. There are almost no lighting artifacts in the images, because they contain only emitted light (which is radiated in all directions with the same intensity) and therefore can be glued together quite well.

[Nahid Talukder]

@ivo wow

[ESDM]

Simply amazing!! Thank you Windy for providing such as amazing real-time animation!!

[mhaberler]

superb!

curious - are you using an optical flow algorithm?

• Michael

[Korina]

@mhaberler Hi, yes, we are using optical flow.

[Typhoon2000]

Amazing Animation! Good job Windy! However, the smooth animation is not Working when using Windows 10. Only when using Mac Air. :) Hope you can fix this!

[Korina]

@Typhoon2000 Hello, please check if you have the smooth animation turned on in the settings. There is no problem on Windows 10.

[bluefalcon]

Nice, Smooth and Beautiful. Any ETA for Mobile devices?

Love for Windy Team!

[przemo1986]

cześć dlaczego w aplikacji nie została dodana opcja plynej animacji ? nie ma tez opcji infra jest tylko infra +

[Korina]

@bluefalcon Hi, the release date is not known yet.

[Korina]

@przemo1986 Hello, once the implementation to the apps is ready, we will announce it.