Significant Modifications – McIDAS-X v. 2018.2

McIDAS-X v. 2018.2 –

This page contains significant software modifications included in McIDAS-X version 2018.2. The list includes the changes that we think are of greatest interest to sites, so is somewhat subjective. See the Fastrack 2018.2 Software Changes to see all of the code changes included in the release.

  1. Changed support on Apple systems from OS X 10.11 and macOS 10.12 to macOS 10.12 and 10.13. See the 2018.2 Supported System Configurations for the complete list of system configurations on which McIDAS-X 2018.2 is supported.
  2. Updated GOES-R Series ABI servers and calibration module with bug fixes and enhancements. The changes include:
      • reporting the operation scan Mode in the “memo:” field of IMGLIST FORM=ALL and FORM=MEMO output
      • reporting the correct albedo (ALB) values for space and no-data pixels in IMGPROBE and D command output
      • including the percent good Data Quality Flag value (DQF:percent_good_pixel_qf  attribute in ABI netCDF files) in AREA file directory words 40-43 when single-banded IMGCOPY commands are run
  3. Moved VIIR servers and calibration module from McIDAS-XRD to McIDAS-X for this 2018.2 release. The servers allow creation of ADDE datasets of Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Series VIIRS SDR files in HDF5 format on local and remote servers, and display or manipulation of the data using the IMG* commands. See the “JPSS Series Dataset Remarks” section in the DSSERVE command documentation or its online help for information about creating the datasets.
  4. Updated GLMDISP and GLMLIST commands to work with archive data and to correctly choose between GOES East and West datasets, depending on the specified geographic domain.
  5. Updated NAVDISP command to plot the swath width of the VIIRS instrument on JPSS satellites.
  6. Updated GEODATA.CORE file so that the GEO command uses, by default, GOES-17 rather than GOES-15 for the GOES-West geographical region.
  7. Updated GVAR calibration module (kbxgvar.dlm) to increase the precision of GOES-8 to -15 infrared band temperature values (TEMP) to two decimal places (hundredths) when listed with IMGPROBE LIST commands. Previously IMGPROBE LIST commands with this data listed two decimal places but only to the tenths in precision (so the last digit was always zero).
  8. Added new option in DSSERVE command to allow writing of GeoTIFF files with 32 bit floating point values by using the INFO= keyword to point to a text file whose content is “FORMAT=FLOAT”. See the “GeoTIFF Dataset Remarks” section in the  DSSERVE command documentation or its online help for instructions.
  9. Modified PT* and UA* commands to work with TEMP SHIP RAOB data that is now being decoded with McIDAS-XCD. A new MD file schema file, DCITSHP, was also added for this data.
  10. Updated GRDCOPY, GRDDISP, GRDIMG, GRINFO and GRDLIST commands to allow specification of “[NONE]” as units in the LEV= keyword so that grids that have no assigned units can be requested.
  11. Updated USCOUNTY.MAP file with the most recent National Weather Service GIS-AWIPS Shapefile database updates. The US*.MAP files are used by the WWDISP command and the MAP command’s COUNTY=, MARINE=, STATE= and ZONE= keywords.
  12. Updated RGBDISP for command performance and fixed usage with aliased datasets. When creating long loops with the RGBDISP command, the shared memory used to create frames is now handled correctly, and dataset aliases made with the AKA command can be specified.
  13. Updated ADDE accounting system so that when using accounting on a remote server, the usage of multiple dataset restriction files will now be honored correctly.
  14. Updated McIDAS-XRD package (which is included in the McIDAS-X installation files) to include two new servers (virnadir and virnaget, for NASA format netCDF VIIRS granule files) and one new command (ABITRUCOL, for displaying corrected ABI true-color RGB images). Also promoted the VIIRS servers (viiradir and viiraget) from McIDAS-XRD to McIDAS-X in this 2018.2 release, and updated the NSSX servers (nssxadir and nssxaget) to support Suomi-NPP CLAVR-X data. See the McIDAS-XRD Instructions and Software page for the complete list of software included in McIDAS-XRD.

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