Dear IDV Community,
The IDV team appreciates the thoughtful comments that users and
stakeholders provided in the IDV-related portion of the recent Unidata
User's Survey. This feedback gives us a wealth of information to better
understand your needs. From its inception, your requirements have
driven IDV development. The IDV community has expanded from the
traditional synoptic meteorology community to include many new
disciplines (e.g., hydrology, oceanography, geophysics, etc.). It is our
goal to continue to provide all of these communities with new and
innovative ways of analyzing and visualizing Earth system data, as well
as providing standardized displays to meet your expectations.
The IDV team would like to express some feedback regarding concerns
expressed in the survey.
Some users are considering the IDV as a replacement for GEMPAK as
NOAA/NCEP transitions from development/support of GEMPAK to
AWIPS-II/NAWIPS-II. We understand that particular features of GEMPAK are
critical to allow these users to make such a transition. We have already
implemented many GEMPAK features (e.g., grid diagnostics) in the IDV,
and adding the features that steering committees have deemed to be most
important continues to be our highest priority task.
We also received many comments concerning the requirement that the IDV
produce publication quality graphics. We realize this issue is of
critical importance to our community, and we are having follow-up
conversations with several you to define this goal. Moreover, we are
working with the VisAD and McIDAS-V development teams to achieve this
important objective. Please send us your specific and detailed feedback
in this area so that we can best meet your expectations!
A number of users expressed concern about the IDV's memory footprint and
performance. We strongly encourage users to test the latest IDV
releases. The IDV has recently improved in terms of both memory
consumption and performance. In fact, the IDV outperforms C and
Fortran-based meteorological packages in many situations.
We would also like to highlight, that in addition to 2D, 3D, and 4D
visualization capabilities, the IDV provides many innovative features
such as creation of mini-case studies which can be shared easily through
the RAMADDA geosciences content management system. We deem that these
data sharing capabilities are of the utmost importance for academic use
and scientific discovery.
In summary, the IDV team strongly values the ideas and concerns you
expressed in the Unidata User's Survey. We encourage you to continue
this conversation by sending us your requirements, suggestions, and
ideas to best improve the IDV.
Best regards,
The Unidata IDV Team
support-idv@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
