Windy launches Route Planner
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One of the most requested feature is finally here! Now you can plan your trip or flight with our route planner.
How does it work?
Just use Distance & planning, which is a feature you might already be familiar with, and select the forecast type you need.
For example VFR:
Several points for discussion:
- All winds are relative to the direction of movement by default, i.e. the green arrow pointing to the right is a tailwind, the red arrow pointing to the left is a headwind. You can change direction of movement (form bottom to top, from left to right) or set absolute directions (north up).
- Do you think any particular forecast type or values are lacking?
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And here we are, it is alive!
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Hi,
Thanks for thus usefull feature.
For sure, when sailing, I need to have the absolute direction of the wind.
Another very usefull feature would be to be able to record all the information provided by your app. Wifi is not available in the middle of the sea!
Thanks. Bye -
Excellent new feature
Good job Windy team!
I think relative arrow system is great for quick overview.
Maybe add some expandable rows with numerical data (wind angle, wind direction).Buttons for changing weather models would be helpful.
I think I have new favourite tool, next to "compare models" feature.
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Several points for discussion:
- all winds are relative to the direction of movement, i.e. the green arrow pointing to the right is a tailwind, the red arrow pointing to the left is a headwind. Should we change it? Would you prefer switching between relative and absolute wind direction?
First of all, I like the new feature very much. I am only a little confused with the display of the relative wind direction.
I kayak and sail, so I would prefer the wind direction displayed relative to my orientation, the way I feel the wind. So, if I sail west and I have north wind, the most intuitive mark would be a left arrow. -
@marekd
excellent tool and another great product from windy. If planning by boat we need nautical miles not km. I may have missed this unit changer but thought I may as well bring it up.
Great product, keep the development coming!! -
Click on units to change them.
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@Francfo We also would like to support offline mode, but it will take us some time to develop this feature.
@siim Route planner probably will never support different forecast models, because the result is composed from many and many forecast values. And only ECMWF provides all required values.
@apostat Yes, this was our first internal version. Then we changed it. Now it is exactly as you wrote, but rotated by 90 degres, so try to imagine you are moving from left to right, not from bottom to top. We need more feedback to discuss what would be the best solution.
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@marekd
Excellent feature !
I would prefer to have the absolute wind direction rather than the relative one to the movement. For me it would decrease the risk of error, but it’s just a personal point of view.
Or at least have the possibility to switch between these 2 referring directions.
I wish I could use it next week on tablet (mobile website) for a navigation around Brittany.... -
Amazing once again from the Windy team, THANKS!
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@marekd
Thank you very much for this new feature! You are awesome !!!Comments?
a) I, also, preffer "absolute" wind direction and speed.
b) On "VFR" mode, it would be nice to have the ability to input
take-off time, airplane's speed, trip duration.
c) On future high IFR mode, please include a dashed line for areas with wind speed>60 kts (jet stream)Question: the grey shades correspond to rel. humidity aloft?
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Well done!!
Will enjoy playing with it. -
Congratulations gang for another amazing feature within Windy.....I have long been anticipating something with this type of functionality for forecasting purposes. VERY NICE.
As this is still in development/testing phase, could I add some comments to the general discussion?
You might need to make users aware that the freezing level is "height above terrain". I added an image displaying the freezing level rapidly decreasing with height passing over the NZ Alps. This could cause some concern for a VFR pilot considering Icing conditions overflying elevated terrain when in reality the freezing level could be well above the intended flight path. I did a search through the EC data fields and found no fields that map freezing level abv MSL.
As a future addition....could you include the temp at the corresponding height at the head of each wind barb.
The current freezing level line also gives a wrong indication of snow line across the Alps - it appears as if snow will fall to very low levels over the Alps. -
Another comment that I wanted to add.....
Again with VFR option, and in this case concerning Tstorms:
1/ The RH as a proxy for cloud may not always work for cellular convective situations. I have marked out specific regions where the EC model is indicating a line of TStorms on the Rain/Tstorm layer and the Cloud Top layer.....however the RH display in the Route slice only presents cloud below 6000ft. NB: this is consistent with the RH fields found within the area display when you ascend and descend through the available layers. The cloud top layer shows a distinct line of elevated cloud abv 50k ft and would be best avoided.
NOTE: I read in your comments that you will be attempting to add an IFR option for the upper level fields. Could you include a graphical feature OR a line along the bottom of the cross section highlighting "Cloud Top" values???I would also support upper level isotach lines showing jet streams (80/120/160kt etc) and regions of significant vertical wind shear.
2/ A comment regarding the weather/rainfall along the cross section.....the users need to be aware that the rainfall towers/weather(in this case TS's) are for the previous 3hrs hours from the forecast time. I have highlighted this in top image. Just so the user is not critical of the model output when they see rain/weather at a distance point along the route following a weather system OR think that the weather system providing the precip is some x100km wide.
3/ The cloud base....I'm not a great fan of this field (cloud > SCT) when in the case of these tropical Tstorm situations (see above) the cloud base forecast is >8000-12000ft - which is not the case for this region. I like the addition of the DewPoint spread which as least gives an approximation potential cloud base (1-8 Oktas) -- DewPointSpreadx400ft - and again would be better suited to any VFR pilot.
AND finally.........I can see the benefit of "Relative Wind" vectors from a flight planning perspective. But I would also favour "Absolute Wind" vectors from a forecasting perspective. And the official forecasts are all in Real/Absolute wind directions which would make it easier to evaluate the Windy forecast against other official forecasts.
Thanks for the all the effort.........I look forward to utilising this feature.
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Very nice. Simple, intuitive and it does what it is designed to do. Can't ask for more.
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It looks great. I am having trouble understanding what it is showing. It only shoed 2 miles of a 10 mile trip. Probably driver error.
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Congratulations! The new feature is very nice.
I've been using Windy for simulating sailing routes based on the wind information presented by the previous version of the distance and planning functionality.The new feature is great but I when I tried to trace those routes using the new version, I could not because now I'm no longer able to see the pointer coordinate while a drag it over the map. Another missing information for me is the angle of the segment in the route map,.
It would be great if those information were available in the new version, as well.. Or maybe, it could be available a way to access the old version.
I hope those suggestions make sense for you guys and thanks a lot for delivering this amazing tool.
Edson
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@Gkikas-LGPZ Yes, it is RH.
@stitch Thank you for your valuable feedback! We will think about it.
@edson-eustachio Did you try to click on "Route detail" button on the bottom left? :-)
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Great feature ! I can use it in General Aviation/ Gliding . On long stretches , a timeframe would definitely be needed , so an ETA or time en-route of average ground speed would be needed to make it really useful for planning . I like the convective cross-cut very much ! As for the wind , well , I personally would prefer oriented to the north . If one prepares ones flight , other softwares would take into account the head/tail component , this would be too far-fetched for Windy I believe
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Hi,
I like the principle of it and it's really useful to see the forecast in this format however I think it's lost some essential functionality.
On the previous version you could plot a route and move points to the correct lat long positions. The route details gave a list of the positions and distances however the figures changed as the points were moved. With the new update you have to guess the correct lat long and keep pressing route detail to see the current position, move the point and then go back to check the route details etc. Would it be possible to combine some of the old functionality into the new update? It would also be useful to be able to change the unit of distance to nautical miles which is more relevant for sailing.
