anybody working on a trajectory plugin?

[mhaberler]

@rittels we might have serious test material shortly

I am attending the Sagrantino Cup from July 26 to Aug 4th, and there should be 50+ hot air balloon teams there

there should be 2 flights daily, so that should yield hundreds of tracks in different altitudes

I will prepare and publish trajectories twice daily for each takeoff location and ask the teams to share their GPS tracks with me

[rittels]

@mhaberler Wow, that looks amazing.

[rittels]

@mhaberler said in anybody working on a trajectory plugin?:

append the model name

0.2.2

[Gkikas LGPZ]

@rittels
@ivo
Giving ideas!
I don't know if its possible to include sea currents in trajectories plugin.
It would be very helpful for tracking (lost) floating objects and oil spills
(in case of ship accident).
Of course, I understand that it will be an experimental product
as sea currents data are not updated very often.

[Gkikas LGPZ]

... for rubber ducks, also! 😊
https://community.windy.com/topic/7181/please-help-to-find-my-ducks

[rittels]

@Gkikas-LGPZ

Great idea, but don't think the plugin DataLoader contains current data. Possible with the interpolator though. Will try...

Rubber ducks!! 😂

[Gkikas LGPZ]

@rittels
They "pay 100 EUR/duck for the person who find it." 🤣

[mhaberler]

@Gkikas-LGPZ my ISP career has taught me to stop when done.. which I do here - I am all for single-feature-well-done tools and less so for feature creep

But I guess someone interested in sea currents could take traj as a an example and base to work from

[mhaberler]

@rittels works fine - all relevant info carried over!

thanks for jumping that many hoops so far!

[mhaberler]

@rittels

I just found an interesting feature - incidentally very useful:

• do a trajectory for some future point in time and just let the window sit (do not clear)

• hit 'Start' again once a new model run becomes available

• since the old trajectory is not erased, both (or all) are shown together on one screen - i.e. you can immediately judge how the wind forecast changes over successive model runs

That is super useful for Alps crossings - we need something between 340 deg NW and 10 deg NE to make it across quickly enough and still hit the Po valley

since usually such a crossing is planned days in advance (like 5) the trend in forecast changes is essential even if things looked good initially

[mhaberler]

nice animations made possible with the traj plugin:

[mhaberler]

@rittels is doing a superb job on the traj plugin (currently at 0.2.8) - it is progressing very fast

I'm just Joe User here, so let me give you an example where things stand and others can reproduce -

Assumptions:

• a balloon ride starting July 11local at my home in Stiwoll, Austria
• simulate all flight levels up to FL180
• simulate with all three available models: ECMWF, ICON-EU and GFS
• do this without simulated ascent/descent
• do this with 3m/s ascent and descent
• save the resulting GPX files (2 sets of 3 files)
• convert those to KML with https://www.gpsvisualizer.com/map_input?form=googleearth
• load the kmz's into Google Earth and screenshot those

all artefacts can be found here: http://static.mah.priv.at/traj/0.2.8/

Google Earth screenshots without ascent/descent simulation:

with 3m/s ascent and descent:

gpsvisualizer parameter settings:

[mhaberler]

(the spam checker flagged the second image as spam - see directly at http://static.mah.priv.at/traj/0.2.8/)

[rittels]

0.3.5 latest.

Now allows backward trajectory. still a bit buggy

[rittels]

0.4.4 latest: Fixed error in time interpolation.

[mhaberler]

I have a lot more confidence in the lowlevel trajectories with 0.4.5:

http://static.mah.priv.at/public/20190720211743-47167-map.kmz
http://static.mah.priv.at/public/trajectory__2019-07-22T04_00_00.gpx

very good fit with particle animation now!

[mhaberler]

semi-related: I wrote up a tutorial on Alps crossings with a hot air balloon as there is next to zero material available on the issue

it gives an idea of the meteorological prerequisites: http://static.mah.priv.at/public/alpcrossing/assets/player/KeynoteDHTMLPlayer.html#0

(suggestions for improvement and bug reports welcome)

[mhaberler]

Here is a comparison of forecast versus actual GPS track - the flight was mostly at 600-700m altitude, meaning the red and orange forecast trajectories apply

The match is simply amazing!

forecast files:
http://static.mah.priv.at/sagrantino2019/sun0408/traj-acquarossa-04082019.kmz
http://static.mah.priv.at/sagrantino2019/sun0408/trajectory__2019-08-04T04_00_00.gpx

track files:
http://static.mah.priv.at/kmz/todi2019/20190804-acquarossa-duesanti.kmz
http://static.mah.priv.at/kmz/20190804-acquarossa-duesanti.gpx

[mhaberler]

Here's a short tutorial on creating trajectories with windy and the traj plugin:

https://blog.mah.priv.at/index.php/2019/08/10/creating-wind-trajectories-with-windy-com/

[mhaberler]

The Gordon Bennet Cup is coming up in early September - it's the most prestigious competition for gas balloon pilots. Balloons stay up for 3-4 days and the team which flew the longest distance wins.

Meteo forecasting is important - so there's support on the ground helping the pilots decide.

This year, several teams will be supported by a "weatherman" who uses the windy traj plugin for forecasting!

If everything goes well, after the event we should have the forecast and actual tracks flown, giving an idea how well this works for loooong flights.