[idvdevelopers] Fwd: Re: Summary of Steering committee feedback

• To: "idvdevelopers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <idvdevelopers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Subject: [idvdevelopers] Fwd: Re: Summary of Steering committee feedback
• From: "Don Murray (NOAA Affiliate)" <don.murray@xxxxxxxx>
• Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 09:24:40 -0600

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Summary of Steering committee feedback
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 08:55:56 -0600
From: Don Murray (NOAA Affiliate) <don.murray@xxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: Don.Murray@xxxxxxxx
Organization: NOAA/ESRL/PSD and CU-CIRES
To: <idv-steering@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> <idv-steering@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

All-

On 3/12/14 3:59 PM, Yuan Ho wrote:

Hi All,

The following link is the wiki page of RAMADDA, please take a look to
make sure I didn't miss any important comments from the committee.

http://motherlode.ucar.edu/repository/entry/show/RAMADDA/Unidata/Community/IDV+Advisory+Committee/Summary+of+the+steering+committee+feedback?entryid=d9f7b9f5-addd-4b1b-83d5-65d8671a6877

Thanks for all your feedback.  Yuan and I met this week and discussed
how to address your comments/concerns.

There are two pieces of functionality that we are trying to implement:

1) "Match Display Region" - Match the data subset area to the region
being shown in the view so the user doesn't have to manually do this.

2) "Use Progressive Resolution" - Progressively display more (less) data
and/or higher (lower) resolution as you zoom in (out) to an area.  The
idea is to only load in enough data that can be resolved on the screen
(so you could load in a hemispheric satellite image and not blow memory).

In the code you have been testing, having the "Use Progresive
Resolution" (PR) feature enabled (disabled) sometimes blurs the lines
and concepts and also was doing some of the region matching.

In our discussion, we decided to separate the two concepts, so now you
can control each independently to allow you to:

- match the display region, but load in full resolution data (PR off)
- match the display region and let the IDV determine the resolution (PR on)
- load the entire dataset, either at full resolution (PR off) or
displayable resolution (PR on).

(in writing this, maybe PR sould be "Match Display Resolution").

I implemented a first pass at this new paradigm yesterday and it is
available in the nightly build.  It works for grids/obs pretty well and
Yuan is going to be updating the satellite code to handle this new way
of thinking.

You can turn on "Match Display Region" by loading in data with that
option at the data source or in the data subset panel.  This will be
activated by the intial load, a rubber band zoom, and a projection
change. The default for now is still to use the entire spatial bounds of
the dataset or the subset defined in the datasource properties ("Use
Default Area").  You can also toggle this on/off for a display using the
control's View menu and the Spatial Subset tab of the control
properties.  That means that if you load in a dataset to match a
particular region at high resolution and then want to zoom out and load
some lower resolution data, you can turn off Match Display Region for
that control and the bounds/resolution will be fixed.

You can set "Progressive Resolution" as a user preference to have this
as the default for all views/display controls, for each view
(Projections menu) and for each display control (View menu).  Having
this turned off will load in full resolution data unless the user
manually overrides the stride/magnification.

A couple of other issues that we are addressing (or not):

- grid striding will be listed in the legend (Marty)
- Projections->Use Display Area menu confusing (Kevin).  The goal of
this is to set the display projection to the area being viewed.  We
haven't figured out a good wording for this yet, but agree it is confusing.
- some old bundles will be problematic (Brian), but in the new paradigm,
I can load in my Boulder bundle, turn region matching on for each
display and then switch the projection/rubberband to a new area and the
data will be reloaded in the new region.
- switching radar sites when relocating a bundle.  Not gonna happen any
time soon, sorry.  The solution I use is to use the radar national
composite products.
- decluttering wind barbs on the fly - another that we don't have a good
solution for.  This might be possible from the display control, not the
region/PR options.
- User Preferences allows user to enable Progressive Disclosure, but it
also appears in the Projections Menu in Map View windows. If User Prefs
has it set to no, then setting it to yes in Projections has no effect.
(Kevin) - We can't reproduce this and if it is the case, then it's a bug.
- There are two places where one can change the spatial subset. (Jim).
We haven't changed this.  If we did the dropdown in the data source
propeties, you'd first have to select "Use Selected Region" before you
could draw on the map or enter your own coordinates. In the Data Subset
panel, the Spatial Subset was broken into "Region" and "Stride" because
there is less real estate.  But I do see your point about consistency.

If you have a chance, try out the nightly build (with the caveat that
images don't reproject after being loaded in) or read through what I've
written here and see if this paradigm seems logical.

Don
--
Don Murray
NOAA/ESRL/PSD and CU-CIRES
303-497-3596
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/don.murray/