Windy launches Route Planner

igor 320

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?

You can make the same stuff used in GRAMET (aka vertical cut of the GFS forecast). This will help users to avoid learning new symbology if they wish to compare both forecasts.

https://www.autorouter.aero/wiki/gramet

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Throughout the chart, you will find a grid of wind symbols. These give you a lot of information. The circle in the middle shows the cloud coverage in quarters, in the above example there would be no clouds. The barb attached to the circle is the wind rose with the standard symbol. The above example shows 35 knots and 30 knots of wind coming from north. The magenta array shows the aircraft’s movement relative to the direction of the flight (hence magenta, that used as standard color in avionics to indicate flight track). In this example the aircraft flies on a north easterly course and would experience a headwind coming from the left. The number right to the wind symbol is the temperature, -47°C in our example.

Add a full-screen option to have more complete view.
https://ibb.co/ZLcqDg9
Change the color of altitude marks (so they could be visible on dark & white background) and make them still at the same position (right now they shift to the left).
Route details should be editable with keyboard input & coordinates should be switchable in settings (from DEG°MIN'SEC'' to decimals XX.XXXXXX°).
https://ibb.co/L0B6HLF
Add an option to save routes in your profile and make them constantly visible (right mouse click/long tap on the route to hide or close it). At this moment if you hit 'X' on the vertical cut pane, the route disappears. You don't always want to observe the vertical part, because it 'eats' a big bite of display. That will be especially useful when you fully implement it into the app to help pilots get better weather visualization when they're in the air (see my next suggestion).
A copy/paste of my old suggestion suggestion:
The app lacks speed control compared to web-version and I also would like to see more frames per time unit (right now it refreshes with a speed of 1 frame/3 minutes). Maybe you can make another time period in addition to 12/6/1 hour, say, for the latest 15 minutes which will be the most frame-dense period (for ex. 1 frame/minute) ? When pilots are already in the air, they're interested only in very latest weather data and 15 minutes may serve this need well.

I usually fly at lower altitudes and can receive mobile broadband connection from time to time (depending on my location) and an option to reduce downloadable traffic is highly demanded. Maybe you can make an option to preload specific part of the map (just like in Google maps) and fine-tune overall downloadable traffic to reduce unnecessary stuff. Again, the goal is to receive fresh & updated data as soon as your phone/tablet receives broadband connection , because it may be lost in next minute.
https://ibb.co/VHSGwMQ

These are just a very brief quick-notes. I'll try to thoroughly test it later.

Aquamante

Very nice and useful feature!
I want to use it as sailor, but I don´t understand the wind direction arrows. On my opinion, they don't match with the wind direction of the windflow, (or I'm not using it correctly?).

edson.eustachio

@marekd Hello Mark. Thanks for your answer.

Yes, I did try to use the "route detail" button. It saw it shows the pointer coordinate but this feature does not show the pointer coordinate while I drag it over the map. I using this feature to locate an specific point in the map based on a given distance and angle of navigation. This distance and angle are calculated by my sailing simulation.

JRep65

@marekd - THIS will be interesting to watch!

stitch

@marekd @ivo

Hi guys, on your VFR route cross-section, and I right in saying that the highest "Dew-point spread" value presented is 5°C?

Could you increase the highest value to say 12°???

This would give an estimated cloud base height range [when looking at boundary layer cloud physics] up to ~5000ft (or up to the CAVOK cloud base height) when using the following rule....." The difference between the dry adiabatic lapse rate and the rate at which the dew point drops is around 8 °C per 1,000 m. Given a difference in temperature and dew point readings on the ground, one can easily find the LCL by multiplying the difference by 125 m/°C (410ft/C°) - from Wikipedia".

Thx Craig

I like the route planner, but I also like to keep the distance measure as it was before, especially being able to see the distance line from point to point even across the international dateline. Also, with the new route planning window it literally takes up the bottom half of my laptop screen which substantially decreases the visible map area. Is is possible to minimize the route planner dialogue box without exiting it? thanks.

PeterDotselaere

Would be nice to see the coordinates, as before

sebn

Hi,
great feature! Like Igor said: "Add an option to save routes in your profile and make them constantly visible" - yes please!

Also I´d love to see a function to generate a PDF for offline use / archival issue for flying (proof of weather flight planning).

A button to quickly invert the route might be interesting as well (we officially have to do a weather briefing for every leg).

Thanks!

marekd

Thank you all for your feedback. We are working on next version and we read your posts carefully.

EichII

"add the option of defining the speed of movement, and the option of changing the forecast in the course of time"

That would be a great feature for sailing. I think there is currently no SW for this. Thanks.

Zepp

Windy.com just wow and thanks for this useful feature. However Im noticing that the wind direction on the screen do not match the wind direction of the bar, and it is very misleading and confusing.

Zepp

@marekd thanks for this useful feature. However Im noticing that the wind animation and direction on the screen do not match the wind direction of the bar, and it is very misleading and confusing.

afurley

@marekd Aha, just saw that you are going to 'add the option of speed of movement'! This would be very helpful. I thought I might be missing something because I could not find anywhere the option to set the Boat Speed, which is essential. At the moment it seems to be a very slow boat, covering 170nm in a couple of days? I am working with a yacht that is doing 7kn across the Indian Ocean and I have to work the distances travelled manually at the moment. Would really welcome the ability to specify the boat speed. Thanks for all your brilliant hard work.

afurley

PS I also just saw the discussion of changing the forecast as time progresses. This is definitely important. If youc an do this you are getting close to software like Weathertrack and Predictwind (the latter is brilliant but expensive).

cyc10

this function blocks the satellite time display and control

bartbart

Thanks Windy for developing this. The change came along while i was using it to route a sailing vessel on a long passage. I have a few suggestions.

please add possibility to change the model view (GFS/ECMWF) or show a comparison in the bottom bar. This is very useful to get a better handle on forecast reliability.
it would be good to keep the normal slider bar with the forecast timeframe still useable in this mode. There is a slider bar but it does not show the days/time until you click.
(mentioned by others) Add the absolute wind direction. this is important as it's the way every sailor refers to wind
(mentioned by others) Show the coordinates live when dragging points, this takes away
bug 1: the line and route points sometimes disappear when zooming. They come back after some more zooming and panning
bug 2: There's a bug when removing a point. I usually start with setting the destination as a first point, then set the current position of the vessel as second point. This gives me the course to sail. I then add another point on that line for every 24h for easy referencing of where the vessel will be day +1, +2, etc. I then remove the first point and then i'm left with a position point per day. However, this is not reflected in the bottom bar.
Having a functionality to change moving speed, and then show weather along the way as it is forecasted along the track, would be helpful as this is what we're eventually after.

Thanks!

bluenomads

Great tool!
Give the comment on the to-come speed of movement, am I right in that what I'm seeing right now are the conditions along the route but seen at a chosen instant in time?
If so, adding the speed of movement would be great. Can I suggest that each leg - between waypoints - should be able to have a different speed set. This would (for boats!) allow for tidal differences and wind effects when going around headlands and simply over time for tide near shore.

fede.berto

Great job!

For wind direction I would personally prefer to have absolute wind directions. I find it easier since it would be alligned to what is found in METAR/TAF along the route, and thus easier to compare. Wind direction and intensity are otherwise intuitive to me, but if not messy numerical values could be displayed while hovering on the arrow.
I am not sure it is stated somewhere, but for which altitude is the dew point spread given?

Thanks for existing !

eloigorri

Any chance of making this optional, so you can revert back to non profile mode?
You loose a lot of screen real estate and the play option to auto cycle through time with this new feature.
Thanks - Eduardo

engjff

Recurso muito util e interessante.