Distance and planning: Add a way to indicate location along route over time

  • the ability to track weather along a moving route can be useful in a variety of scenarios, including sailing, yachting, trucking, road trips, hiking, and even flying cross-country. There is a similar request for trucking scenario in the backlog.

    We used Windy a lot for planning our sailing passages along the West Coast of the USA. We found it super useful to get a good wind and wave forecast along the way.
    What is missing is the ability to estimate the weather for a given point in time along the route while moving. If a vessel moves at, say 5kts, that means that it would move 120nm in 24 hour period. that is significant distance to affect the local weather. Knowing where the vessel is along that route and the weather at that location helps to make decision on whether to speed up, slow down or duck into port for bad weather. We had to work around this by simply adding waypoints that are about 12hrs of travel apart and just eyeballing weather along those points while moving the time slider 12 hrs. forward. It does not have to be super sophisticated to be very useful.

    The implementation is pretty straightforward:

    1. Start with the existing Distance and planning dialog and add a setting for observer speed, perhaps in settings or in the dialog itself
    2. Add the "current location" icon to the waypoint 1 on the map
    3. Set the starting time, perhaps using the current slider position when first point is placed.
    4. When you play the weather animation, just move the "current location" indicator from point 1 along the measured route at the given speed
    5. Perhaps add the weather forecast ribbon at the bottom for the route at each time point, (similar one to the one shown for a single location).

  • Windy will never be full routing software for sailors.

    Use special software for that:

  • Agreed, no need to implement the sophisticated weather routing. The keyword of this suggestion is "simple." This simple feature would address many cases when you need weather forecast a moving target. It would be useful for sailing, flying or a simple road trip without all the complexity. All you need is a single numeric input for speed within the existing UI.

    Perhaps one more feature, for this feature: Use the current animation position as the starting time of when to move from the "initial location" along the track.

  • Have you tried https://fastseas.com/ ?
    I think it is free for some time and maybe it works for you.

  • Yeah, there is also PredictWind, but I like Windy's movels, and a variety of layers, specifically various swells and wind gust.

  • Sailor

    In addition you may try Squid sailing
    It’s free, including the mobile app, but with less advantages compared to Windy. This routing app is based on GFS for the free version, other models are available with monthly payement.

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