Weather forecast: also show rain and cloud probability

Hans-Peter Schöner ●

I agree that the locus weather forecast is a very good tool for planning the tour of the day. But there still is an inconsistency in presenting the rain data, which could / should be improved:

The daily forecast shows the daily total rainfall in mm - fine. The detailed weather forecast of the day has three hour steps: fine for temperature, but the rain is given for only the hour displayed in mm. You might miss significant precipitation in the two hours in between. Stepping through the graphics shows that the hourly data is available for all single hours. But this way it is quite hard to retrieve it.

My proposal: give the rainfall with a unit including the time span, like on the daily screen in X mm/day , in the 3 hour steps either with X mm/3h (as the sum of the following three hours) or X mm/h (as the average of the following three hours). In addition a graphic representation (blue blocks per hour with the hourly rain forecast) together with the red temperature curve would be quite intuitive. The rain probability could be shown by the colour intensity of the blue rain blocks.

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Georg D ●

Thank you for explanation of an observation I was puzzled over again and again. As it is (except for the last sentence) a bug of, not an idea to extend weather feature, hence I moved it to a topic on it's own - so it has higher likeliness to be fixed: https://help.locusmap.eu/topic/24670-weather-forecast-perception-displayed-inconsistently

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Georg D ●

visibility is shown in v3.52.1

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Georg D ●

With v4.14.0 and v3.65.0 the weather provider changed to OpenWeatherMap which also provides precipitation probability, but I did not see cloud probability in the Web App and API (only how dense the clouds are in %). So a part of the idea continues to be feasible.

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Menion ●

Hi Georg,

so the only missing information is currently "precipitation probability" right?

So at least something like this (in the next version) may be usable.

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Georg D ●

Yes, and mockup looks good 🙂 Would be great to have it also in detailed view (i.e. per ech 3hours time slot) as probable rain e.g. in the late evening is irrelevant for a tour while it's relevant around noon.

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Hans-Peter Schöner ●

Hi Menion,

thanks for working on this. The probability indication is a good addition. In the graphics on the hourly screen I could imagine that the probability can be indicated by the colour intensity of the area under the blue precipitation line => the more blue you see (curve height times colour intensity), the more chance to get wet. See picture at the end.

Some more observations:

1) the picture for 'overcast' and 'broken clouds' is identical. Can you use a pcture which shows a little less clouds for the 'broken clouds'?

2) I am not quite sure how to interpret the grey&blue bar? I could imagine several ways: is it the expected time/probability of precipitation over the day from 0:00 to 24:00 (the blue colour might support it stands for rain, but then I would expect it under the cloud on the right side)? Or is it a comparative range of the temparatures in order to compare several days, scaled from min to max of all days on the screen (the location between min and max temperature would support this interpretation, but temperature I would rather expect with a colour range from a cold blue to a warm orange, or on a vertical scale like thermometer) ? The updated user guide will probably explain this soon.

3) On the first and the last day the hourly temperature curve has not the range from 00:00 to 24:00, but shorter, this irritates. Please keep the horizontal scale fixed, The vertical temperature scale should at least keep the same distance between the lines, like 2°C between horizontal lines. Max and Min value might change.

4) On the hourly page the windchill temperature is indicated with a text ('feel', 'gefühlt' in German); this causes (at least in the german version with my font size) that the felt temperature disappears partially. What about putting it in parantheses with a wind blow symbol in front of it, something like this, a61813e44e1bf3a8b67151509e70dbd6 Symbol is derived from freepik? (https://de.freepik.com/fotos-vektoren-kostenlos/wind) 58df548487f1eaf8bbffdcc099a711da

5) For planning a trip in the next days it would be practical to change between the hourly screen for the single days by a left or right wipe gesture.

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Hi Menion,

thanks for working on this. The probability indication is a good addition. In the graphics on the hourly screen I could imagine that the probability can be indicated by the colour intensity of the area under the blue precipitation line => the more blue you see (curve height times colour intensity), the more chance to get wet. See picture at the end.

Some more observations:

1) the picture for 'overcast' and 'broken clouds' is identical. Can you use a pcture which shows a little less clouds for the 'broken clouds'?

2) I am not quite sure how to interpret the grey&blue bar? I could imagine several ways: is it the expected time/probability of precipitation over the day from 0:00 to 24:00 (the blue colour might support it stands for rain, but then I would expect it under the cloud on the right side)? Or is it a comparative range of the temparatures in order to compare several days, scaled from min to max of all days on the screen (the location between min and max temperature would support this interpretation, but temperature I would rather expect with a colour range from a cold blue to a warm orange, or on a vertical scale like thermometer) ? The updated user guide will probably explain this soon.

3) On the first and the last day the hourly temperature curve has not the range from 00:00 to 24:00, but shorter, this irritates. Please keep the horizontal scale fixed, The vertical temperature scale should at least keep the same distance between the lines, like 2°C between horizontal lines. Max and Min value might change.

4) On the hourly page the windchill temperature is indicated with a text ('feel', 'gefühlt' in German); this causes (at least in the german version with my font size) that the felt temperature disappears partially. What about putting it in parantheses with a wind blow symbol in front of it, something like this, a61813e44e1bf3a8b67151509e70dbd6 Symbol is derived from freepik? (https://de.freepik.com/fotos-vektoren-kostenlos/wind) 58df548487f1eaf8bbffdcc099a711da

5) For planning a trip in the next days it would be practical to change between the hourly screen for the single days by a left or right wipe gesture.

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Menion ●

Hello Hans,

thanks for a nice list of questions & suggestions!

1) I'll try to improve it, thanks

2) second option - useful to compare all 15 days at once

3) yes I know, it is a problem. The new service I use returns a 3-hour forecast for the next 120 hours at the current moment. So it returns a few values for today and also a few values for the last day.

The solution for the last day may be simple > just omit these values. I was thinking about it and decided to keep at least some info then no details at all. But it is easy to change. The first day is the worst and I currently have no solution for this.

4) thanks, I'll try to improve it. Smaller displays cause a problem here. I was fighting with it since the beginning.

5) swipe through days > interesting idea, why not. I'm trying to implement it, but seems that the new system we use for the setup of the UI is not fast enough or has some other issues. Will look at it later.

6) chart coloring > nice, not perfectly obvious what it means, but currently a little technical challenge because the library I use for charts does not have this feature simply available.

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Hans-Peter Schöner ●

Great ! The weather forecast is one of my most used features, it is good to have it implemented in locus - without a huge fuzz of advertising of other weather apps. That is worth to switch to the paid version.

With 6) I already thought it might be a technical challenge. Would be nice anyway. Another option would be to change the colour of the precipitation line with rain probability. But that might have the same technical limitation.

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Georg D ●

Hi 🙂

2) @Hans-Peter: In the meanwhile, an explanation was added in https://docs.locusmap.eu/doku.php?id=manual:user_guide:functions:weather

3) @Menion: Current state that graphs of 1st and last day have different x-axe scaling is IMHO okay, but a little weird late/early in the day. Another solution idea: By extending the JSON/XML response by only a few time slots (x-axe content) without values (y-axe content), can you cause the diagram rendering to show full day on x-axe but drawing a line only starting/ending "now"?

4) feel temperature display: Icon has the advantage of text that it has the same size in all language 😉 I like the idea. If it's easier for you to implement, IMHO you could also re-use the icon for track activity "walking" indicating this is the subjective, human perceived temperature in contrast to the objective, thermometer measured temp (1st icon). When opting for the icon, if possible, I'd suggest to make spacing between one icon and related number value as low as possible, so in most cases (negative like -10° is the widest we have), the gap between 1st number and 2nd icon is visibly larger.

5) +1 for swiping. Even with a lag, it feels quicker & more comfortable than scrolling up and tapping back and finding the right day and tapping it again and again.

6) Another solution idea for precipitation probability in the graph: If the chart library allows display of 3 values, you could also display probability as bar chart or line, 0% at the bottom, 100% at the top, if no 3rd legend is possible drawn in blue to give a chance to guess the meaning without looking up the manual.

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Neoaliphant ●

@Hans-Peter

Menion has just added a direct API intent to the weatehr for specific coordinates.

for use with locus

I will be using it for a "Shake phone to get weather" task.

https://help.locusmap.eu/topic/30566-additional-intents-presets

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Menion ●

@Georg D

3) good idea thanks

Leave 5 a 6 points for now. I'll look at it later.

And because of some problems with Garmin Varia radar in the latest version, I'll most probably publish a new version with discussed updates within the next few days ...

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Michael Bechtold ●

Hi Menion,

I read the user guide for the weather feature and came across "weather history" in the three dot menu. Yet, I was never able to see that in any of the three dots.

Assuming that this history is NOT a timeline way back in time for the listed locations, but rather a history of location choices, I would appreciate if this function would be implemented as follows:

- when touching the circle with central dot (top right), Locus shall offer THREE ways:

1) new location (exists today)

2) weather location history (new)

3) search location history - the term "recently used" is ambiguous in this context

When a user picks from #1 and #3. that location will join the list #2

TXs and cheers

Michael

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Menion ●

Hi Michael,

probably info also for @Michal Stupka , history is no longer available in the new weather system. And I currently do not plan to add it back for now.

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Michal Stupka ●

Done, user guide updated.

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Michael Bechtold ●

Does this mean if you are interested in a handful of different places for weather forecast, that I have to go the tedious way to navigate (in a broad sense) one way or the other?

Because the recent searches will not help.

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Menion ●

You react to the missing "History" right? How does this feature help when checking the weather in different places? It was only keeping the history of already visible last weather forecasts.

Locus Map is not a weather forecast application, so keeping a list of personal places for which you want to see a forecast is overkill.

The purpose of this feature is mainly to see the weather of a certain place. So the map screen center is the default location or also a certain point (weather button available in the detail of the point).

Btw. if you have a bunch of places that are important to you, you may modify a list of available locations ...

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Michael Bechtold ●

TXs for this hint, Menion. I never extended that list. And it serves my purpose very well. Again, learnt a bit more about Locus ... ;-)

Enjoy the weekend

Cheers

Michael

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Hans-Peter Schöner ●

Hi Menion,

good job in optimizing the weather forecast display !

I like the icon for the perceived (wind-chilled) temperature. And also the scaling is perfect now.

Two more observations:

The physically correct unit of rain and snow (in the graphics on the 3-hourly page) would be “mm/h” instead of “mm”. This would help to understand the different values for the three-hour cumulative values in the table below. It could be changed easily, since at the right side there seems to be enough space for "mm/h". Alternatively this information could be placed into the legend by saying “snow / h” and/or “rain/h”.

I looked at some weather forecasts on the Norwegian and Scottish coast, to see lots of rain and snow (see screenshots). The summary on the hourly forecast page always looks fine. The numbers in the 3h-blocks, however, get squeezed at large rainfall and 100% rain probability – but in those cases there should be space below in a second line for rain probability; significant rain and high probability seem not to occur in the same 3h period as snow.

Hans-Peter

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Menion ●

Thanks for the tests Hans,

- rain/snow units > good point, "mm/h" added

- sizes of texts > I've not tested the layout with bigger fonts, my mistake. I'll try to improve it to the next version. Most probably precipitation chance will be lost in some cases because it is the less required value I believe.

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Micromegas ●

Thanks for the job !

But on the first Windows I have two lines and diferent for today and the sun for the rest of the week is black...

Galaxy S8 Locus Map Classic 3.65.2

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Micromegas ●

Good morning Menion

It's me again.

I compared Weather forecast displayed on Openweather web site and on Locus Map Classic for today at home (Le Pradet FR)

It seems the problem is the display on Locus :

- the first line is good (Today)

- after data are good but the title of the day is wrong, there is a shift of one day less that is to say that the second line should be "tomorrow" and not "Today" again and so on...

Regards

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Menion ●

Hello,

sorry for this. I've noticed this stupid issue today as well. Hope nobody will relly on the daily forecast till the next version ...

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Georg D ●

A lot of small but helpful improvements are already in v3.65.2 like the IMHO very clear feel-temperature-icon or that all days have 24hours in the graphs' x-axe – IMHO much better than the rather short days of before 😉 And further improvements are discussed above 🙂

I observed some further details

After going into one day, I can now only close whole weather foracst (action of the button at top, action of the operating systems's back button at the bottom). That makes it even more tedious to switch to another day. Before, I was at least able to go back to the overview of next days.
The indention of "Visibility" is different than for other 2 lines
The graph y-axis value for rain and snow is roughly factor 2 to 3 lower than I'd assume from the textual values.
In the three houerly blocks, the spacing within the temperature block could be easily changed to avoid line break as hapening e.g. in highlighted 10:00 block of screenshot. Idea:
a) make red thermometer icon as small als black one
b) remove first unit of measurement (°C/°F) if both temperatures always use the same unit
c) make first temperature's font size as small as 2nd temperature's size and then re-adjust the distance between red thermometer icon and its value (there must fit 3digits positive value like +105 °F and 2 digits negative value like -25 °C)
In the three houerly blocks, precipitation probability for rain is shown, for snow not. Any reason for that or is it unintended? 🙂

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Menion ●

Hi Georg,

thanks for another bunch of ideas!

The system back (hardware/bottom) button should behave like before, so one step back > from daily details to full overview
texts are aligned in the middle. So all texts ends in the same place
y-axis for the left side has a minimal interval of 0 - 2.5 mm. Does it make sense to scale it and display for example 0 - 0.2 over the whole chart? I like the current range because it is easy to compare between days. In most cases, values are within this range.
good point with b, I've removed the unit for the second value. Also made icons for wind/rain/snow a little smaller. It should be enough I believe
because in the API is only a single precipitation value, I was using it only for the rain, but you are right. It should be applied to both values, thanks

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Weather forecast: also show rain and cloud probability

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