Available with WSV3 Professional on 12/13/15

The December 13th, 2015 release of WSV3 Professional will send shockwaves throughout the real-time weather information industry – largely by reason of WSV3’s groundbreaking NEXRAD Level 2/3 data display and analysis system, the “NEXRADPro Tab”, which users can access as one of the cleanly organized tabs at the header of the program which assembles all of WSV3’s extensive real-time data offerings into a neat and manageable user interface.

NEXRADPro will debut some absolutely unique and industry-leading innovations unavailable in any other consumer solution: chief among these, its revolutionary LiveScan™ system brings truly real-time NEXRAD Level 2 radar beam sweep data to any Windows PC with an internet connection.

WSV3 NEXRADPro LiveScan™ displays radially-incrementing real-time radar data (in all 6 moments – reflectivity, velocity, spectrum width, and the three dual-pol moments – depending on WSR88D scan type) with an animated update beam that sweeps around the scan-in-progress, seconds behind real-time, until the sweep is complete – an indispensable tool in severe weather situations. Initial tests of the product on regular wireless internet connections have achieved under 3.5 second delay from real-time – and this delay is below 12 seconds 95% of the time, depending on connection and radar stream lag.

WSV3 NEXRADPro is the first to take advantage of the fact that the Level 2 stream is, and always has been, offered in real-time – unlike its temporally discrete Level 3 counterpart. A sophisticated decompression system and a novel networking trick makes retrieving Level 2 data extremely bandwidth efficient and triggered at optimized times depending on user’s choice of Level 2 product, tilt elevation, and activation of the LiveScan feature. The WSV3 NEXRADPro engine analyzes the latest retrieved Level 2 data in the background to predict a real-time depiction of the actual, moving NEXRAD radar beam – which can be seen trailing a few seconds ahead the live update sweeps when LiveScan is activated. This allows the software to optimize Level 2 data retrievals and enables the user to track the real-time progress of the radar’s volume scan.

Unprecendented and Exclusive WSV3 LiveComposite™ Technology
WSV3 NEXRAD Level II LiveComposite™ composts new, in-progress radial chunks from NEXRAD Level 2 radar sweeps according to a proprietary algorithm which interpolates a variable vertical range above ground. This ELIMINATES waste in the radar's performance, as traditionally only the base tilt is displayed for viewing purposes. After these base sweeps, the radar then progresses to scan other higher tilts of the atmosphere. These tilts are usually ignored and delay the next base scan. However, at closer ranges to the radar site, these upper level tilts procure positively useful information about what is going on close to the surface. At high range though, the beam is above all precipitation, making display of these high tilts individually worthless for large-scale tracking purposes. Our algorithm composts the progressive scans onto the newest base scan for the precise ranges which contain new data below a certain elevation, and leaves alone ranges at which the beam is too high to procure meaningful information. Therefore, since NEXRAD sites are typically located close to populated centers, this previously-wasted information is an absolutely revolutionary advance in update-to-date severe weather information. The second game-changing aspect of our LiveComposite™ system is its usage of ALL NEXRAD sweeps in the Reflectivity composite; typically, the reflectivity data collected by Continuous Doppler (CD) scans at low tilts are completely ignored even by analysis programs, since reflectivity data from these scans suffer from range folding due to the Pulse Repetition Frequency (PRF) chosen to optimize velocity data collection. HOWEVER, since our system is compositing the data rather than showing any individual tilt, this universally-ignored though wholly useful reflectivity data is FULLY integrated into the display. It turns out that these hidden reflectivity sweeps can contain accurate data for as much as 90% of the radar sweep coverage, even despite the range-folding gaps which have traditionally predicated the utter abdication of this useful data in other radar programs. Therefore, our LiveComposite™ system integrates EVERY NEXRAD Level 2 radar sweep into the composite and can display the movement and progression of storm lines well before competing radar applications would depict them in the next base scan (minutes away).
WSV3 NEXRADPro VeriTilt™ technology applies a true-to-life, 3D projection to the NEXRAD Level 2 and 3 radial products. Traditional radar software inaccurately “flattens” the data to the surface, which erroneously depicts the data as having constant vertical altitude component. Real-world, increasing beam height can be visually appreciated by adjusting the programs camera zoom and tilt controls; the user is given accessible options for immediate deactivation of the feature or biasing the tilt upwards/downwards.

WSV3 NEXRADPro “Beam-continuous” interpolation delivers another unprecedented innovation to the market for NEXRAD radar software; while only some high-end non-consumer television broadcast systems are able to display regular time-interpolated raw Level 2 data, WSV3 takes this a step further with a novel radial-component time correction technique. All other radar software makes the erroneous assumption that a given radar sweep represents an image at one point in time – while this not true, and the last ray is typically anywhere between 20 seconds to well over a minute newer, depending on VCP. “Beam-continuous” interpolation therefore applies a special time correction depending on angular position that accounts for this, and produces extremely smooth, compelling, high-quality animations of pictured weather phenomenon in the Level 2 data. Traditional time-interpolation is offered for Level 3 data, the radial sweeps of which are discretized into a single point in time.

WSV3 NEXRADPro’s Level 3 data features are even more useful – users can load products from the FULL Level 3 feed, and can switch between or animate them at lightning speed. Primary non-radial products (Storm cell path cones, Mesocyclone detections, Hail icons) are “continualized” between frames – identified features will follow the motion of the storm cell in a continuous path rather than remain stationary and update position in choppy blocks. Tornado Vortex Signature (TVS) indications are included with the check of a box and are critical in severe weather situations. WSV3 NEXRADPro displays all tilts of the Level 3 melting layer product and is the only software to display it in a continuous fashion – making it easy to track the progression of moving air masses as the melting layer lines finely interpolate to match their real-world value at every frame.

WSV3 NEXRADPro is unarguably the new standard in real-time radar software and will be available on Sunday, December 13th as a part of WSV3 Professional.

WSV3 Professional is set to depose Gibson Ridge’s GREarth, GRLevel2, and GRLevel3 programs – all in one application – as the leading solution for real-time weather software. We are benchmarking to the price of ONLY the GREarth product (which they sell as $180 per year subscription) – meaning that we intend to include the entire value of NEXRADPro with no further increase in price (the competitor’s two NEXRAD radar products are $80 and $250 respectively). In addition to offering a one-time purchase option, we are sure to bring consumers the highest value software available as well as the highest quality. Don't take our word for it.