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This report updates the status of Unidata's IDV development efforts since the last report (September, 2008).

• IDV version 2.6 was initially released on December 24, 2008, and two updates have since been released. The latest update can be downloaded at http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/downloads/idv/.

  New features in this release included:

  • Publication quality graphics
  • Objective Analyis of point observations
  • Weather Text products
  • Remote Level III/TDWR access from TDS

  See the IDV 2.6u2 Release Notes, for more information.

• The IDV developers attended and gave presentations at the AMS annual meeting in Phoenix, AZ in January. IDV demos were given in the Unidata booth. Don also attended and presented an IDV talk and demos at the Northeastern Storm Conference in March.
• Yuan and Jeff have been collaborating with MOPPITT group in NCAR/ACD on using the IDV and RAMADDA. ACD is using the IDV to generate operational images and KML files of their data.
• Don and Yuan visited the Shanghai Typhoon Institute in December. They gave presentations about the work done so far on the TC-IDV and developed a plan for development in 2009. They also visited the Tibet Meteorological Office and gave a presentation on Unidata and IDV.
• 4 new entities with GEMPAK experience have been added to the IDV Steering Committee. This brings the number to 7 (out of 11) of GEMPAK users on the committee. The new members are:
  • Steven Decker, Rutgers University
  • Embry Riddle Aeronautical University (Chris Herbster, Fred Mosher, John Lanicci, and Tom Guinn)
  • Donna Tucker, University of Kansas
  • Kevin Tyle, University of Albany
  The next committee conference call is scheduled for this spring, after the User's Committee Meeting.

New development

Development and testing are underway for the next release of the IDV (2.7) which should be released in Summer 2009 before the triennial workshops in June. Several of these features are already available for testing in the IDV nightly build.

• Performance improvements (working with SSEC):
  • Faster and more flexible contouring algorithms
  • Multi-threading of data retrieval and display generation
  • Support for new features in Java 3D which will reduce memory and processing.
• Direct reading of GEMPAK surface and sounding files
• Export derived data to IDV compatibile netCDF files
• Production version of netCDF-Java 4.0
• Support of UF radar format
• Reworking of ADDE choosers to incorporate Mc-V functionality
• new time matching paradigm
• Allow users to set the Display Settings from the field selector before the display is created

Ongoing efforts include:

• Collaborating in the development of VisAD and McIDAS-V
• Keeping up with new Java interfaces and developments
• Various and sundry IDV bug fixes and enhancements.

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This document is maintained by Don Murray <dmurray@unidata.ucar.edu>