There are only a few services that offer cross-section weather along a route:

1. Gramet - it's old, doesn't update and offer to build a route from airport to airport
2. Autorouter - an improved version of Gramet. You can check weather along any route and it use more advanced GFS model, but it's still not very reliable.
3. Meteoblue - the same old GFS data, with, allegedly, some adjustments, but I eventually found, over many flights, that it was too unreliable to tell me anything which wasn’t blindingly obvious from the MSLP.

So my question is, can we expect such a feature from Windy, considering that you have so much weather data at your finger tips?

Please, make sure there will be at least an option to input enroute altitude, average moving speed (in still air) and how it's going to be affected by winds aloft to get an appropriate timings. Vertical speed would be a huge plus to see your path in climbing/descent phase of the flight. Hopefully, it's not going to be overly complicated to imply.

@rsdevarapalli said in How can I access historical data?:

Past data would be really nice to have feature

+1

Dear Windy team,

I also would appreciate if you will add an option into the app (as well as into the web version) to visualize your flight planned route (and import it as GPX to save time), so we can have a Poor man's weather radar for pilots :) 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 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 downloaded 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.

THANKS IN ADVANCE!

SigWX/SigMET is a must

Can you add native support of Skydemon route files? It saves a route in 6 different file formats including GPX, but it uses a slightly different strings compared to the way your plugin creates a GPX. Also, Skydemon's *.flightplan file has the most proprietary data available.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l6nkQDsZbYSEaBa-XWhSkI1H_f2-tdgA/view?usp=sharing

Thanks!

@marekd :

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

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.

1. Add a full-screen option to have more complete view.
   https://ibb.co/ZLcqDg9

2. 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).
   

3. 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

4. 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).
   

5. 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.

Vote 1: HIRLAM

@rittels
It took me a while to figure out myself how things works (I'm not very tech-savvy person) 😅

MSL is a default value for route altitude that's set in aircraft options (aircraft - edit - climb & descent). In the above's example it's repeated for the first and the last leg of a flight. I checked out my aircraft settings, and it's set for 3000 above mean sea level.

LevelChange="B" (Change level before this leg starts)
LevelChange="F" (Start changing level when this leg starts)

See screenshot below.
https://postimg.cc/Z934nVcF

Thanks for taking a time to implement it! 👍

PS: you can you download Skydemon and try to make your own tests? It's free in trial mode for 1 month.

test reply 123

@igor-320 said in Which model should Windy implement next? Please vote.:

Vote 1: HIRLAM

@rittels I forgot to mention that service ceiling climb rate (where normally aspirated engines loses their vertical performance down to around 100 ft/min) is also needed, so it will be 3 entries total for a climb phase:

• vertical speed at sea level;
• vertical speed at service ceiling;
• and air speed.

In this case the final vertical speed (and thus, enroute time) will be dependent (calculated) on Min and Max values.

For example, if it set Max value to 500 ft/min (mean sea level) and Min value to 100 ft/min (e.g., at 16000 ft MSL) my vertical speed will be 400 ft/min at 4000 ft, 300 ft/min at 8000 ft etc.

@korina I don't know if it helps to somehow bring back the radar data, but this is the official page of russian weather agency (Hydrometcenter):

https://meteoinfo.ru/en/nowcasting

Even though it says 'forecast' (nowcasting is a fancy name for high resolution 2-hour forecast), I can attest you that the first available time in the slider is basically a snapshot of current (i.e., real-time) precipitation:

https://i.ibb.co/8zs4Q90/Capture.png

It can be compared to radar input here:

https://meteoinfo.ru/hmc-output/rmap/phenomena.gif (this GIF is regularly updates)

AFAIK, doppler radar data for Russia isn't sourced at any public domain in digital format and the only way to obtain it is to contact them directly via email. They have been providing low-res data for free and high-res for a membership fee.

@rittels I don't have any preference for this and a simple manual entry box would suffice everyone, imo. A screenshot below is taken from SkyDemon EFB for pilots. Indicated airspeed + vertical speed for climb/descent and that's about it, since we're only interested in actual travel time and weather forecast along a route.

https://i.ibb.co/0s77SGN/Capture.png

Thanks!

PS: is it possible to use ICON-D2 forecast model somehow? It has crispy 2.2 km resolution compared to hazy 9km from ECMWF.

@rittels , good day sir! Is it possible to add a couple things to the plugin?

I would like to see more fine-grained interpolation of altitude for climbs/descents. For example, an altitude gain of 8625 ft (from 1375 to 10000 ft ) resulted in 5 readings:

1st leg for 1375 ft;
2nd - 3100 ft;
3rd - 4825 ft;
4th - 6550 ft;
5th - 8725 ft (the end of the 5th leg is where 10000 ft reading starts).

See screenshot: https://ibb.co/0GZZXLJ

I also would really appreciate if you can implement a vertical speed (in ft/min) to get more accurate calculations. On the screenshot above there's a final red dot which represents my own calculations for Top-Of-Climb point at 500 ft/min.

@korina is it a technical issue or a politically motivated decision? Do you plan to bring it back?

Is there any way to get it back online?

https://i.ibb.co/JyDWqdf/Capture.png

@idefix37 my point is to make the app track your position constantly just like in google maps, so the blue dot will move as soon as you change yoir location.

Thanks Petra!

The former suggestion is still more desirable - constant position tracking. You see, a sailor of a simple vessel or a pilot of a light aircraft doesn't have a lot of equipment at their disposal. Real-time weather radars costs tons of $$$ and it's better to have a short-term graphical forecast along your route than nothing at all. It's a very much demanding feature, and I'm sure it won't take a lot of effort to add it.

Still looking for this to be implemented. This will increase the value of your website, since that data will be unique and very special. You will attract more paying users that way :)

Is there any possibility to create an option to continuously monitor your position (just like in google maps) or at least create some sort of button on the main screen to refresh your location (right now you have to make two clicks: Menu -> Find my location). The former option is preferred to avoid manually tapping the screen.

It's a very much needed feature for every pilot or sailor. It shouldn't take a lot of time to implement it.

Thanks!