5.8 Enhancements to the Galileo weather system

Tuesday, 2 August 2005: 5:19 PM
Diplomat Ballroom (Omni Shoreham Hotel Washington D.C.)
Kenneth Reeves, AccuWeather, Inc., State College, PA; and R. Ayres and M. Steinberg

Since AccuWeather introduced the PC-based Galileo, it has become the fastest selling television graphics system in history, due to its ability to combine unmatched rendering speed with compelling graphics and animations.

Since its introduction, AccuWeather has added numerous enhancements to Galileo, and the latest advances focus on severe weather analysis and display capabilities. These include the exclusive new four-hour Predictive Radar™ and StormMaster™ severe weather predictor, offered through collaboration with Weather Decision Technologies (WDT), which utilize advanced artificial intelligence techniques and Level II NEXRAD data to predict radar and severe weather. Also added to Galileo are new automated capabilities for the graphical display of NWS severe weather bulletins.

The Galileo system is built around totally integrated modular software, which allows for the creation of automatically updating graphics and animations in full graphic layers, with masking and transparency features. Its intuitive user interface speeds the process of building a weather show and generating and editing on-screen animations, while at the same time allowing unlimited creativity. An array of custom formats makes it easy to present any weather contingency, and intuitive tools make editing quick and easy, to give viewers up-to-the-second details in fast-breaking weather stories. Graphics are presentable in either static or animated 2-D or 3-D formats, and may be further enhanced with a variety of special effects. The system also has integrated Internet functionality, so that it can seamlessly output on-air presentations as web pages.

These, and other unique capabilities of the next generation in weather systems, will be explained and demonstrated.

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