https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.aviation.soaring/secTZyHuKmg

I'd like to send this inner circle of friends and fellow crushers
the first look at the new XC Skies V3. I'm calling it an Alpha release for now
until most of the bugs and website docs can be finished. The main map
application is ready to be beaten up. Here's the link:

https://v3.xcskies.com

You can use your normal account to login and kick the tires. I'll setup a dummy
account with a subscription in case you can't get your current one to work (if
it's even active). I'll send that later today.

The amount of new features combined with the additional models available
provides something on the order of 10X more data, so it's been challenging to
balance how best to allow quick access to the essence of the forecast, while
preserving the details a single click away.

I'd love to get as much feedback and criticism anyone would like to provide.
Feel free to send the link around to anyone else you think could provide good
testing and feedback. I'm thinking that this can be polished up and released
fully by the end of April. It's long overdue.

A few important things to know:

1. The HRRR 3km and NAM 3km are picking up details about the day's soaring
potential that I didn't expect to see. For example, lines of lift and even cloud
streets, along with the underlying surface convergences that are producing them.
For example, look at the HRRR mid to late afternoon and turn on surface winds
animation. You'll see exactly what I'm talking about. If this forecast turns out
to be even half right, it's a major game changer for all of us looking to make
more distance.

2. Wind animations are surprisingly useful it turns out. There's a little "play"
button on the wind bar that will set things in motion. In the settings you can
click on the Glider/Balloon tracer option to insert an object into the wind
flow. Watch where it ends up over time! You might be surprised how the vectors
actually react. I'm amazed at how what I think the flow means and what actually
happens physically. I guess the take away is that looking at a grid of wind
barbs can be misleading at times.

3. The skew-T option is very basic right now, but might be my favorite new
feature. You can click anywhere on the map for any model and time and instantly
get back the native levels of the model's temperature and moisture profiles.
I've added a blue line that connects the surface temps along the dry adiabatic
line through the boundary layer profile, so it's instantly clear what the
boundary layer details are.

4. Saving profiles and the state of the map and the plots should be very
intuitive for most. There's a little color swath underneath the forecast hours
that indicates where solar noon is for the center of the map. Because there are
three times the number of forecast hours available than before, it was not
obvious to me where the peak of the day was for any given day in the season, so
this should help zero in on the important afternoon times.

5. There's also a new "sun clock" that is useful for small screen devices (and
is default for the mobile version) that is literally a 24 hour clock with sun
rise and sun set noted, along with solar noon. Again, it represents the center
of the map.

6. The point forecasts work for all models and available times. If you have the
GFS selected, it takes a few seconds, but you'll get back hourly values across
the next 5 days! For the short term forecasts like the NAM and RUC and HRRR,
you'll get back all of the data available, which might be less than a full day.
Routes are crazy fast to create and change, with the plots responding
sub-second. You can lay down a few zigs or zags and then change through the
hours and models to see how they compare.

7. Really, there's a lot more, but I think it should be pretty obvious. If there
needs to be explanations on some things, let me know so we can feature that in
the docs (which are coming soon).

I can't wait to see how this new tuned version is going to work for our soaring
community. I'm guessing it could be a game changer for cross country planning
and distance potential.