StormAlertAdmin
11-24-2010, 05:40 PM
Dear Storm Alert Inc. customers,
It is with great pleasure that I am here today to announce the release of StormLab 4.1! This version update brings major improvements to the already successful StormLab 4.0 suite, adding new enhancements, higher resolution radar products, and a much more user friendly interface. None of this would have happened without YOU! We want to thank our customers for providing such wonderful feedback, testing and suggestions on how to improve our software and we look forward to this continuing this great relationship – with a completely overhauled InterWARN also on the near horizon.
All the best and thank you for your continued support,
Evan Bookbinder
Storm Alert Inc.
Pricing
StormLab 4.1 is absolutely **FREE** to StormLab 4.0 registered users!
Those of you looking to purchase StormLab or InterWARN CDs as gifts, or know someone who is, we strongly suggest waiting for our one-day Cyber Monday deal coming November 28th!!
Where Can I Download?
StormLab 4.1 can be downloaded at http://www.interwarn.com/download.html .
Users with StormLab 4.0 installed only need the small update file. Simply close StormLab and install 4.1 on top of the existing version. Please make sure that any firewall or anti-virus programs are updated to reflect the update! Also, pay special attention to two new enhancements below that will require a quick modification to your setup.
So What’s New?
• A complete redesign of the control panel to provide a more intuitive approach to selecting the radar site and radar products. Radar status messages and outages are now color coded and available via a pop-up window.
• Integrated all map overlay code directly into StormLab, eliminating the need for 3rd party support. This will remove over 10MB of file size from the download, and will increase the speed of zooming/panning by over 1000%!! To enhance the speed, some map data is now loaded into system memory, but should be negligible unless you are loading vast amounts of street level maps. The standard StormLab map shapefiles consume less than 2MB of memory, while a 60MB street level map may consume around 10MB of memory.
• StormLab will now display a red visual alarm if current radar display is old or you lose Internet connectivity, eliminating situational awareness issues for failed radar sites or lost Internet connections.
• Implemented mouse-over sampling of customized weather overlays. Therefore, sampling is no longer a mouse mode and can now be used at the same time as the zoom/pan mode!
• Cursor readouts and pop-up sampling can be enabled/disabled from the Sampling toolbar button.
- A pop-up sample window can be locked by a left mouse click on the sample point (same as 4.0). This will enable you to click any hyperlinks in it. As in the previous versions, pop-up sample windows can be closed by clicking the pop-up window itself or the "X" in the top right.
- Note: A left click on a sample point will lock the window (as stated above). However, if you wish to draw a zoombox on that location instead, simply hold down the left mouse for a few tenths of a second to engage the zoom box.
• Replaced nearly a dozen legacy radar products with new higher resolution displays that the National Weather Service released this year. This will also allow users to manually create storm relative velocity images from the hi-resolution base velocity. NOTE: Bookmarks will need to be deleted/recreated to handle the new higher resolution products.
• Improved level 2 rendering speed dramatically by using system memory to store the data.
NOTE: Memory usage will depend on the data contents, but could range from 5-10MB per frame. I'm not aware of any users loading numerous level 2 windows from several radar sites, but keep this in mind if your computer's RAM is limited.
• Purging/removal of raw radar data can now automated at program startup (after selecting that option from the Program Settings setup menu). Since older data can be routinely stored to DVD or other media, or re-downloaded using the button on the "Archive Viewer", this is a noteworthy enhancement. Data downloaded from the NCDC with the .Z extension will not be auto-purged.
• Fixed an auto-display issue with county names.\
• Added a speed tool calculator (available under the Help menu) to calculate a speed based on readings from the distance tool
• Vastly improved speed of city/town rendering (now instantaneous).
• Added the capability to plot "Significant Weather Advisories" for strong, but non-severe thunderstorms.
NOTE: Existing users will need to go into Setup, Watch/Warning settings, and click "Save Settings" to add the new product.
NOTE: These will only plot if that NWS office includes the LAT...LON tags at the bottom of the bulletin.
• Included new radar AutoDownload utility thanks to Bryan Bollman! (Fantastic utility).
• Added a new "zip code" lookup on the first startup, allowing StormLab to auto-find the nearest radar site for new users.
• Added a new “radar selection” overlay. This overlay will allow you to launch adjacent radar sites from within an existing radar display without having to go back to the control panel.
NOTE: To add this enhancement, go into the Setup, Map and Data Overlays section, click "Weather/Local Overlays" and click browse... You should see a new "radar_select.txt" overlay available. Give it a menu name (e.g. Radar Selection) and add it in. You should see little icons for the radar sites that you can now sample and load imagery from that adjacent site!
• GPS overlay update time has been improved to 5 seconds as StormLab is now a fully functional navigation tool.
It is with great pleasure that I am here today to announce the release of StormLab 4.1! This version update brings major improvements to the already successful StormLab 4.0 suite, adding new enhancements, higher resolution radar products, and a much more user friendly interface. None of this would have happened without YOU! We want to thank our customers for providing such wonderful feedback, testing and suggestions on how to improve our software and we look forward to this continuing this great relationship – with a completely overhauled InterWARN also on the near horizon.
All the best and thank you for your continued support,
Evan Bookbinder
Storm Alert Inc.
Pricing
StormLab 4.1 is absolutely **FREE** to StormLab 4.0 registered users!
Those of you looking to purchase StormLab or InterWARN CDs as gifts, or know someone who is, we strongly suggest waiting for our one-day Cyber Monday deal coming November 28th!!
Where Can I Download?
StormLab 4.1 can be downloaded at http://www.interwarn.com/download.html .
Users with StormLab 4.0 installed only need the small update file. Simply close StormLab and install 4.1 on top of the existing version. Please make sure that any firewall or anti-virus programs are updated to reflect the update! Also, pay special attention to two new enhancements below that will require a quick modification to your setup.
So What’s New?
• A complete redesign of the control panel to provide a more intuitive approach to selecting the radar site and radar products. Radar status messages and outages are now color coded and available via a pop-up window.
• Integrated all map overlay code directly into StormLab, eliminating the need for 3rd party support. This will remove over 10MB of file size from the download, and will increase the speed of zooming/panning by over 1000%!! To enhance the speed, some map data is now loaded into system memory, but should be negligible unless you are loading vast amounts of street level maps. The standard StormLab map shapefiles consume less than 2MB of memory, while a 60MB street level map may consume around 10MB of memory.
• StormLab will now display a red visual alarm if current radar display is old or you lose Internet connectivity, eliminating situational awareness issues for failed radar sites or lost Internet connections.
• Implemented mouse-over sampling of customized weather overlays. Therefore, sampling is no longer a mouse mode and can now be used at the same time as the zoom/pan mode!
• Cursor readouts and pop-up sampling can be enabled/disabled from the Sampling toolbar button.
- A pop-up sample window can be locked by a left mouse click on the sample point (same as 4.0). This will enable you to click any hyperlinks in it. As in the previous versions, pop-up sample windows can be closed by clicking the pop-up window itself or the "X" in the top right.
- Note: A left click on a sample point will lock the window (as stated above). However, if you wish to draw a zoombox on that location instead, simply hold down the left mouse for a few tenths of a second to engage the zoom box.
• Replaced nearly a dozen legacy radar products with new higher resolution displays that the National Weather Service released this year. This will also allow users to manually create storm relative velocity images from the hi-resolution base velocity. NOTE: Bookmarks will need to be deleted/recreated to handle the new higher resolution products.
• Improved level 2 rendering speed dramatically by using system memory to store the data.
NOTE: Memory usage will depend on the data contents, but could range from 5-10MB per frame. I'm not aware of any users loading numerous level 2 windows from several radar sites, but keep this in mind if your computer's RAM is limited.
• Purging/removal of raw radar data can now automated at program startup (after selecting that option from the Program Settings setup menu). Since older data can be routinely stored to DVD or other media, or re-downloaded using the button on the "Archive Viewer", this is a noteworthy enhancement. Data downloaded from the NCDC with the .Z extension will not be auto-purged.
• Fixed an auto-display issue with county names.\
• Added a speed tool calculator (available under the Help menu) to calculate a speed based on readings from the distance tool
• Vastly improved speed of city/town rendering (now instantaneous).
• Added the capability to plot "Significant Weather Advisories" for strong, but non-severe thunderstorms.
NOTE: Existing users will need to go into Setup, Watch/Warning settings, and click "Save Settings" to add the new product.
NOTE: These will only plot if that NWS office includes the LAT...LON tags at the bottom of the bulletin.
• Included new radar AutoDownload utility thanks to Bryan Bollman! (Fantastic utility).
• Added a new "zip code" lookup on the first startup, allowing StormLab to auto-find the nearest radar site for new users.
• Added a new “radar selection” overlay. This overlay will allow you to launch adjacent radar sites from within an existing radar display without having to go back to the control panel.
NOTE: To add this enhancement, go into the Setup, Map and Data Overlays section, click "Weather/Local Overlays" and click browse... You should see a new "radar_select.txt" overlay available. Give it a menu name (e.g. Radar Selection) and add it in. You should see little icons for the radar sites that you can now sample and load imagery from that adjacent site!
• GPS overlay update time has been improved to 5 seconds as StormLab is now a fully functional navigation tool.