Re: [idvusers] Draw particle trajectories

• To: Jong Bor Lee <jongbor@xxxxxxxxx>
• Subject: Re: [idvusers] Draw particle trajectories
• From: Jeff McWhirter <jeffmc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:55:27 -0600

Jong Bor Lee wrote:

I have been contacted by a professor who is interested in viewing the
trajectory of particles under wind currents. The vector field that models
wind is available and a student is already working in the calculation of the
trajectory, so the main problem right now is visualization. I was asked
about this. Is there any functionality in idv that would allow to do this?

After inspecting idv, I wonder if writing a Jython script would be a good
approach. Is it possible to modify the behaviour of the program so that a
point is drawn on the map when the mouse is clicked? And then, would it be
possible to use the Unidata API (as specified in the Javadoc) in order to
draw this particle moving? Maybe I'm asking too much from jython scripts,
and this could only be achieved writing a new version of idv?

That would be pretty tricky to implement. An easier approach would be to
create a point observation data
set that has an observation for each location/time of the particle.
Then, load in the point obs data and
display them. The IDV supports a simple text cvs format:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/idv/docs/userguide/data/TextPointData.html

-Jeff

• References:
  • [idvusers] Draw particle trajectories
    • From: Jong Bor Lee