I built a wind map with WebGL (2017)

https://blog.mapbox.com/how-i-built-a-wind-map-with-webgl-b63022b5537f

by bhousel • 7 years ago

112 26 7 years ago

blog.mapbox.com

(This is a bit off-topic from the subject of the article about particular methodology of rendering data as opposed to usage of these kind of wind maps)

I worked on X’s project loon in operations for a spell. We were interacting with balloons in flight regularly. The referenced nullschool wind map was unendingly useful.

Something I always wanted for using nullschool or other similar publicly available “tools” was more granularity between wind layers, or derived estimations of data between wind layers.

When putting any flight systems in the atmosphere, having visualizations (even estimates) of wind direction and speed estimations at more altitude levels is more valuable than visualizing more particles more efficiently, IMO.

I wish similar thought and processing power was put towards smoothing out guesses at wind speeds at different altitudes.

Tl;dr: I wish this demo map had an altitude slider, even if it was smoothed out guestimates between available data layers.

sbr4642• 7 years ago

Thanks for the insights. While on this topic, some what, is there a satellite imagery service available that can give images of a location at a requested/variable time of the year? I wanted to see what a particular location looked liked during winter but could only find clearer photos taken during spring/fall months.

sbr4642• 7 years ago

onion2k• 7 years ago

Possibly something that urthecast.com could do.

oh_sigh• 7 years ago

Planet.com will do this for $$

joshvm• 7 years ago

Look at ESA's Sentinel 2. It has a 5-6 day revisit time and the data will always be free. It's 10m resolution which may or may not be good enough.

Google Earth Engine is designed exaclty for this (and has other satellites too).

th0ma5• 7 years ago

I briefly looked into this, and from what I remember these were all always based on the "satellite" based wind models which were interpolations of predictions at a very low resolution based on infrared. Winds aloft, as I'm sure you know, are often measured by radiosondes, but the subtle thing being that these samplings only make it into aeronautical forecasts, and at least in the US, stay US only, and don't bubble up to global summaries. These global data sets are not granular at all, and wouldn't provide the detail at different elevations. I wish such a data set was available... perhaps with the global satellite based ADS-B someone could do some kind of sampling based on live flight data, but I'm sure it would be a private (and costly) dataset.

CMCDragonkai• 7 years ago

It would be really useful for glider pilots.

fogetti• 7 years ago

I really don't know if it's open to the public or not but windguru definitely has the dataset that you described. You might want to contact them to figure it out :)

bujak30003• 7 years ago

The nee aeolus satellite is measuring wind speeds aloft directly with laser https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-Aeolus

chess_buster• 7 years ago

I'm sure, you could buy it from [energy&meteo systems](https://www.energymeteo.com), if you really needed it. If you go to their homepage and click on the fourth button "Meteo Data", there's even a similar visualisation.

They definitely have the technology to calculate the wind at any height using different weather models (like the German ICON, the European IFS, or the American/NOAA GFS).

bujak30003• 7 years ago

The tools only visualize what data is available. The model doesn’t forecast wind speeds at arbitrary altitudes, only at a some predefined levels

mourner4• 7 years ago

I think this is actually doable — the GFS data this project pulls from has a lot of levels, see for example here https://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/filter_gfs_0p25.pl?dir=...

adameast1978• 7 years ago

This is the reason I got more serious about programming. This is really awesome.

boyadjian• 7 years ago

Very nice work. The result is visually speaking.

tobyhinloopen• 7 years ago

Cool

dbrgn• 7 years ago

Slightly offtopic, but the windy.com service referenced in the article is really a fantastic resource if you learn to use it properly. I rely on it for paragliding a lot, the animated winds are much easier to understand for the brain than static map. Comparing different weather models helps to assess the accuracy of the prediction.

hyperpallium• 7 years ago

http://windy.com

bujak30003• 7 years ago

Its too bad windy dropped the 3D map view / globe. Looking at the poles was mesmerizing and insightful. Oh well. Happy landings btw.

mourner4• 7 years ago

Author here — very happy to see this resurfacing on HN! So, ask me anything!

agoddard• 7 years ago

Not a question, but wanted to say thank you so so much for everything you do for the Geo community! You have (literally) changed the world!

mourner4• 7 years ago

Thank you!

zeko1195• 7 years ago

This is so cool. Great job!

lbutler• 7 years ago

I am just adding a second thanks for all the work you've done for the mapping community. I've made a decent amount of spatial apps over the years, and they wouldn't be possible without your work with Mapbox GL JS, Leaflet and the algorithms you've shared.

mourner4• 7 years ago

Thank you very much!

cy6erlion• 7 years ago

Thank you for creating Leaflet!

I built a wind map with WebGL (2017)

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