McIDAS-X User Responses: Top 5 Functions

• We currently use McIDAS almost exclusively from a mcenv environment within unix/linux shell scripts.
  
• We pass lots of variables into command line McIDAS jobs. 
  
• We use FRMSAVE to capture visual output from the mcenv sessions. 
  
• We make use of most of the img* and grd* commands as well as PTDISP.

Dave Stettner - SSEC

• Hassle-free auto zoom in and zoom out on whatever is displayed on a frame. E.g., a satellite image overlaid with NWP and observations fields. This is NOT the Alt Z function I am talking about although it is still a desirable feature. I was talking about the recalculated permanent display (as you would do with the MAG= keyword) of an enlarged or shrunk image centered over the position of the mouse.

Yuelong Miao - Australia

• More easily overlay gridded data (say EC 850 temps) and/or surface obs (quickscat or synoptic obs) and/or cloud drift obs onto a sat pic at the correct or nearest time step.
  
• More easily calculate the speed and direction of movement of cloud features.
  
• More easily move sat pics (translate, rotate, zoom in and out) so as to compare sat pics with model data in Kenny or other viewer.
  
• More easily create composite images (several satellites) within a prescribed area and time frame.
  
• More easily reposition an improperly mapped overlay (such as a coastline) into the correct spot.

Scott Carpentier - Australia

• Most important: - maintain and extend background processing via shell scripting (constructing tailored displays of data and pumping to web pages)
  
• Ability to handle (display loop etc) netCDF files
  
• Ability to overlay semi-transparent images in common projections with each layer having independent color tables
  
• Easily determine the next microwave/scatterometer pass for a particular location from any platform (i.e. not for each platform)
  
• Easily constructed storm centered loops (tropical cyclones)

Andrew Burton - Australia

The following feedback focuses on User Interface issues. They do not necessarily pick up on any new features that "McIDAS-V" might be good at providing, however quick and easy access to data is always at the top of our user's requirements, so I'm emphasizing that here.

I've also focused on NWP data as my "use case", and assume that the system is already capable of animation, retrieving and displaying multiple datasets and the like.

1. Load favorite data sets
      * a convenient way of loading your favorite data sets is required
      * no more than 2 or 3 mouse clicks
      * could be grouped under NWP, Sat data etc
2. Convenient way of specifying parameters of interest, and levels of interest
      * one system here copies data to "cut down data sets", and then assumes that all parameters/levels in this dataset are of interest, and presents these in the GUI (see Example 1 below)
      * another approach is to specify what is preferred via configuration files
      * the important thing is to reduce the number of key presses required to get to the parameters/levels
3. Convenient way of changing levels and parameters
      * Example 1 shows an up/down button pair to change levels
      * Example 2 shows a less crowded interface, but lacks the convenient up/down button pair
4. Be able to overlay contour fields and shaded (rgb) fields
5. Be able to overlay data/images onto a common projection
   
   Example 1 = attachment "kenny.png"
   Example 2 = attachment "dv.png"

James Kelly - Australia

Five most important McIDAS-X functions to be ported across to McIDAS-V

1. IMGDISP
2. IMGREMAP
3. IMGPROBE
4. FRMSAVE
5. AXFORM

I'm assuming such basic features as EB, C, D will be ported, and the ability to run all McIDAS commands from background scripts (no GUI) - this is a very important part of running our HRPT station in Antarctica.
On the wish list is an enhancement to the IMGPROBE command to allow more spectral analysis and filtering work to be done. In particular the ability to use conditional testing of different bands to modify the output AREA.
For example :- IF BAND1-BAND2 > x .AND. BAND4-BAND5 < y THEN set pixel=a ELSE set pixel=b

Neil Adams - Australia

Matthew Lazzara - AMRC

• Automatically updating satellite images
  
• Automatic display of NOAA images would be good
  
• Not sure what else

Melanie Webb - Australia

• automatically update a loop of imagery based on a time increment or event (e.g., new image arrives)
• interactively probe/interrogate any calibration of a displayed image or image file on disk
• this is similar to #2, but more of a wish list item: display an image and interactively probe other datasets for colocated data values (e.g., have surface temperatures from Metar obs or forecast grids pop up while roaming the image)
• add or remove selected map components like country, state and county borders, cities, etc.
• list NOAAPORT observational and forecast text data (I do this frequently with Mc-X but would like to see something more user-friendly [doesn't require knowledge of WMO and AWIPS headers] in Mc-V)

Barry Roth - SSEC

• Co-location of multiple satellites to conduct calibration testing of new satellites.  This is done using NAVDISP, IMGDISP, IMGOPER and IMGPROBE.
• Combining multiple source of data (GRID, MD and AREAS) for a single product.  The math functions of GRDCOPY and IMGOPER along with IMGRGB are required to create these types of products.
• McBASI functionality.  I primarily take advantage of McBASI's file and text manipulation along with it's ability batch up commands.
• Launching "background" mcenv jobs from cron to create gif/jpg products.
• Using McIDAS API functions to create user developed programs. Frequently McIDAS may not have exactly what I need to develop a product for a client.  In these cases, I may need to alter and existing command or create a new command.
• Several of our sites (including SSEC) have several people remotely login  to workstations to run McIDAS.  If sites continue to run in this configuration, they will have to have a TON of memory!  Just something to consider.

Rick Kohrs - SSEC

• You must be able to run several processing jobs at the same time without interfering with one another.  In the data center, it is not uncommon to be generating 10 or more completely different products on the same machine as the same user at the same time.   To lose that ability would be very bad.
• unattended automated processing from cron or a daemon, .  This means the ability to process real time data and create products without requiring a graphics card, someone logged in, etc.  This extremely important the Data Center   The ability to run commands easily from a unix command line is also related to this.  And do all of this without consuming huge amounts of resources .... McIDAS is great at this.  If a graphics card is needed, this would eliminate several data center computers from being usable.
• ability to "serve" to remote clients multiple data formats.  And to then be able to restrict the servers easily by IP, username, project number and IP what datasets are available to whom.  This should be able to restrict by dataset, since sometimes some data on a machine can only legally be provided to some users and not others.   E.g. Lightning data, or MSG data.  And log all requests.
• ability for servers to interact with sql databases for speed and efficiency especially for grib.
• ability to read and write data in multiple formats .... read .... many of the current "raw" satellite data formats, without having, or reading common grib,(grib2) netcdf or level1b, hdf formats.  Write ... gif, png, jpeg, tiff, netcdf, area, ascii files, geotiff  etc
• ability to automatically remap and merge image data ... probably goes without saying.

Jerry Robaidek - SSEC

• Flexibility of displaying and manipulating satellite data at any location around the world at chosen location and resolution in both McIDAS area and AWIPS netCDF formats. Loops should auto update (similar to event scheduler). Either have fast loop loads or keep the loops preloaded in separate frames.
• Keep availability of ‘scratch’ frames that keep their image until manually erased.
• Easy manipulation/listing/access of station database
• Data sharing capabilities with other sites such as NESDIS or INM (Spanish)
• Text database search and list. Search on WMO or AWIPS headers or parts of headers, site id’s, issue times, etc. Also keep the MATCH keyword functionality.
• Level II radar data display
• At least 2-3 multiple display windows.
• We also second the example of creation of GIF images in the background

Brian Hoeth - JSC

• Bulletin Board for ingestor/decoder status and associated ‘stat’ command.
• ‘Serial’ data ingestor API.
• Connection to TCL/Tk.
• Connection to Expect.
• Multi-headed display – e.g. text/command window on one and image window on another (we modify SSEC code, ‘mcidas’ to our local ‘mcidas2d,’ to do this)
• Ability to create ‘limited function’ displays, i.e. withdrawn command window and all functions selected from predefined GUI. Useful in areas such as public displays. (we modify SSEC code ‘mcidas’ again to our ‘mcidasfcr’ for an external customer that needs specific weather data displayed, but does not need the full, unrestricted McIDAS session access)

Brice Biggerstaff - JSC

• Ability to overlay images such as satellite images and radar images on the one viewing screen.
• Ability to overlay observations and/or model data over satellite images and radar images.
• Ability to change parameters and/or images viewed using toggle buttons
• Ability to loop the above overlaid images for a selected time period.
• Ability to more easily remap images when there are obvious differences between the coast-line map and the coast-line on the satellite image. (Clicking on the graphics and being able to drag them to the correct location would be fantastic for this.)

Monica Long - Australia

• Easy conversion (one click or one command) of an image into a GeoTIFF format (with navigation files or nav included in the TIFF) for integration into GIS/ArcIMS systems
• Display of GIS type data: GeoTIFF, Shape Files, polygons
• Ability to display more data types (HDF, HDF5, netCDF, GEMPAK, GriB)
• Easy conversion of netCDF data to McIDAS MD data and vice versa
• Compatibility with AWIPS: ability to create or display AWIPS files
• Ability to save a predefined loop into an AVI, Animated GIF, or output that could be viewed by the AniS software

Brian Hughes - ESPC (NOAA/NESDIS Satellite analysis Branch)

• Generate gif images of geostationary and polar orbiting satellite data in the background, including RGB images and cloud products with color bars.
• Use locally-developed calibration modules to work with 2-byte satellite image cloud product area files.
• Run TLE/TEXT files to generate satellite orbital predict data and track maps.
• Use numerical weather prediction model data in mcidas grid files and extract/interpolate the data for a specified satellite image time.
• Use aircraft, ground site, or other specified lat/lon locations and extract the appropriate satellite area file data and put into an ascii file.
• Continue to develop and provide support for the API (libmcidas.a) allowing users to develop C, Fortran programs that can call mcidas routines, and are executed directly on the shell command line.

Doug Spangenberg & Rabi Palikonda - NASA-Langley

• the ability to quickly and easily overlay model data is highly desirable.
• easy ways to overlay radar/obs data (toggle off/on).
• Ability to zoom in/out from broad scale SHem to over SE AUST without having to load new images of higher resolution (i.e. would zoom to higher resolution images).

Victorian Office - Australia

• provide similar  'convert' and 'composite' functions of ImageMagick.
• in a map format that allowed display of points for whick soundings (RAOB, ATOVS, NWP profile ...) available.
• easy to rotate the earth (satellite image) at desired LATLONG.
• combine E,D,S keys to a single key.
• easy to display derived satellite product with UNIT, SCALE, BAR, IMGPROBE, SU, PRDUTIL

Lee Hong - Australia

Some work done at the NWS depicts well what McIDAS is lacking for the operational meteorologist.

• A graphical editor interface for forecast preparation
  Something in the line of the Interactive Forecast Preparation System (IFPS) fed by a National Digital Forecast DataBase (NDFD) and a Graphical Forecast Editor (GFE).
• A production machine to generate meteorological products in a 'quasi' automagical way. Based on the previous tools.

Our forecasters have started to look around for new tools for these tasks, as they are increasingly pressed for higher production work which McIDAS can not cope with at present. Ninjo http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/71789.pdf is one of the systems we are investing our budget on.

Pepo Juega - Spain

• The ability to execute McIDAS commands in the background. This is extremely important in shell scripting which we rely upon heavily. We use this for such things as creating ASCII files of our local data for archival, generating virtual frames for quick display, notification for copying satellite images to our data servers, creating canned data files for download to dial up customers.
• For non gui applications, the ability to send the image window display to a second monitor. (I.E. dual-head display)
• Automatically update 10 loops of the 10 most recent GOES images on multiple workstations simultaneously, typically 4 to 8 workstations.

Paul Wahner - CCFF

• Server testing
  - visually compare navigation/data points of two different datasets (image, md, grid)  -  e.g.  from two different satellites or the same satellite data on two different servers
  - quantitatively compare values of data points of two different datasets (image ,md, grid), either looking at the output values or running mathematical differences on the two datasets
• color filled contours of point data, with a color bar at the bottom  (currently go through a lot of hoops - PTCON OUT=SAVE, GRDIMG, IMGREMAP, IMGOPER, IMGFILT, IMGDISP)
• display current watches/warnings by county and as watch boxes
• automatically update a NEXRAD loop with standard BREF enhancement and the associated color bar, map with counties, states and some cities plotted
• once an hour, list the current temperatures for a list of surface stations with heat index and wind chill calculated, if applicable

Becky Schaffer - SSEC

• intuitive, easy to use GUI
• no McBASI - instead, just provide a set of commands that can be called by any scripting language you want

Bill Bellon - SSEC

• Generate GIF images of real-time GOES and other satellite data via a mcenv script (I guess this counts as a background). This includes MODIS, POES, MSG, FY2C, etc.
• If possible, be able to display image of Brightness temp and reflectance for 3.9 micron channel.
• In addition, being able to read in products/units, apply enhancement and stretch tables via a mcenv script (background), change units (prdutil). Save to images.
• Probe the image for data at specific locations (imgprobe) and for specific units and output to TXT.
• Output TXT files and display MD files. If possible, a converter between MD and BUFR format (for winds).
• Output RAOB, surface obs, radiosonde data to TXT from ADDE sources via mcenv script.
• The ability to remap data from 2 bytes per pixel to 2 or 1 bytes per pixel (REMAP2 and IMGREMAP)
• IMGCOPY, to output AREA files
• Have DSSERVE and DATALOC the same way as they are now.
• The ability to get ADDE data the same as McIDAS-X
• Have PTLIST the same as it is now.
• The ability to run McIDAS from a script (mcenv)
• Have the ability to plug in McIDAS-X developers tools (such as REMAP2) into McIDAS-V easily.
• Easy ability to apply a base map.
• The ability to easily pick out how to do navigation and correct calibration of raw counts to Reflectance's and BT's.
• The ability to combine various channel (i.e. to make an RGB or "false-color" image)

William Straka - SSEC

• Access to Direct Broadcast of polar orbiting data and real-time GOES data
• Generate GIF images of real-time GOES data in the background
• Re-mapping polar orbiting data
• Enhancement Utilities for the imagery
• Access to text products, such as severe weather reports, severe weather watches and warnings

Jason Brunner - SSEC

• Generation of GIF (or JPG or PNG) images of real-time GOES data in  the background
• easier, GUI-based color enhancement tool (similar to what AWIPS has)
• can't think of anything else... McIDAS Rules!

Scott Bachmeier - SSEC

• Ability to remap imagery from one resolution or projection to another from script
• Ability to create a NetCDF file that meets Unidata formatting standards for any parameter within an AREA/GRID from script
• Ability to ingest NetCDF, MODIS HDF, and AVHRR Level 1B data
• Imglist capability that dumps out image dimensions, time, and resolution
• Improved color bar plotting that uses physical units instead of 0 to 255 brightness values, coupled with functionality for differing fonts/sizes/label interval, etc...  Using Virtual Graphics to add a color bar doesn't often meet publication quality graphic requirements

Kris Bedka - SSEC

• Keep to ability to call McIDAS commands from UNIX scripts (our winds displays would all have to be re-written if this feature was removed).
• Color contour and color bar application: Something that does filled contours of images, grids, and even MD files, and allows for the automatic generation of a color bar would be nice.
• When using PTDISP to display wind barbs, for example, you can't color code based on wind speed (or any other computed parameter) with a single command (e.g. color code wind barbs with an error code or with the wind's pressure).
  
  The first one is crucial, the second two are sort of "nice to have" features.

Howard Berger - SSEC

• Keep GRDIMG capability... we use this extensively.
• Not sure if this has been addressed or not... but there are certain derived AREA files that extend from dateline to dateline (thru Prime Meridian).  When I display an image near the dateline, it only displays one side or the other of the AREA file.  Would be nice if McIDAS could display both parts of the image easily.

Tim Olander - SSEC (adding to Howard's list above)

• Running mcenv in the background via unix (linux, whatever) script.  Full functionality is critical, including saving GIFs (or another format, such as .png if GIF is expensive - the point is that GIF isn't critical but saving to a commonly used image format is) in the background.
• IMGPROBE and related statistics.  The D-Key is very important for assessing data quality... being able to point at a pixel and know all the info about the corresponding satellite field of view... the raw counts, radiance, brightness temperature (or albedo or whatever for visible), the lat/lon, and the scan-line time.
• Related to 2, We need to be able to display satellite imagery without any spatial smoothing at times.  I don't think this is compatible with the idea of remapping everything to a common grid for display purposes.  When satellite navigation and/or calibration is in question (as it always is when satellites are new and sometimes for much longer, like with MTSAT) it is very important to be able to look at individual pixels and know they haven't been averaged with their neighbors.  This is going to be important for all sorts of applications, including checking on products like retrievals and fire algorithms on top of just checking raw calibration and navigation.  In effect it would be nice to be able to turn off spatial interpolation for certain applications (and would be nice if this was easy to do).
• NAVCALC info... it's very important for me to be able to tell where a satellite is and when.  Even for GEOs because they sometimes move.
• Exporting navigated/calibrated data to another format (like we can do with netCDF now) is very important when McIdas AREA data needs to be used in a different software package or shared with a coworker that doesn't use McIdas.  Mostly I say "screw 'em" if they don't use McIdas but because I'm a better programmer in Matlab and not a very good fortran programmer I often export to netCDF so I can program up analysis in Matlab faster.

Mat Gunshor - SSEC

• Generate GIF images of real-time GOES data in the background.
• All custom code should compile.
• Ability to query GRIB1, GRIB2, netcdf, HDF files.
• Ability to collocate data files and compute statistics on them.
• 3-d plotting.

Steve Wanzong - SSEC

• Make sure MDDPI tool (written by Chris Schmidt) would work under the new McIDAS-V - this is VERY important for my sounder winds, or else I have no way of extracting constant pressure analyzes.
• It would be convenient if one could save images in other then GIF formats (i.e. JPG and TIFF)
• Just yesterday wanted to list all bands form a MODIS aerosol product HDF file - not all available parameters are listed - why is that? I had to read the data with MatLab instead.
• Easier (non-interactive) way of deriving stats for an AREA image file.
• Be able to add a gray-scale bar corresponding to a selected BAND or variable (and not just BRIT)

Iliana Genkova - SSEC

• Retain the Command line for foreground issues.
• For programming purposes, retain Fortran 77 (for old dinosaurs like myself).
• Although not supporting it as a form of programming language, it would be useful to still use macro03 language or capabilities (same reason as above)
• The utilities IMGOPER and IMGREMAP.
• Everything else.

Tony Schreiner - SSEC

• Make sure full mcenv McIDAS-X  interface within UNIX shell scripts is still functional.
• Make sure the IMGDISP paneling capability is still functional.
• Generate GIF images of any raw or remapped area files (e.g., real-time GOES data) in the background.
• A wish -- support for NetCDF-format MD (i.e., point) files (so we're not limited to 400 words/record).
• Fortran-90 compatible code

Jim Nelson - SSEC

• Display and calibrate and earth locate GOES data, MODIS data, MAS data, etc.  (i.e. IMGDISP)
• IMGPROBE function
• Earth location (i.e. E key, MAP command)
• TFILE command
• FRMSAVE command

Chris Moeller - SSEC

• Generation of images from MTSAT-1R for the Bureau of Meteorology external web pages in real-time
• Displaying satellite images with the ability to overlay point or gridded data
• Displaying profiles from radiosondes, models and satellites - preferably together
• The ability to overlay multiple AREA files would be very useful
• The ability to save data in netCDF format

Anthony Rea - Australia