SASSI for 2010


This part of the web site is here to tell you what you need to know about SASSI for VORTEX2 in 2010.

CURRENT VERSION: 05May10a (this will display in your status message if you have the correct version running)

Download information for SASSI updates


  1. For safety, please move your SASSI.exe to another name, like SASSI_old.exe
  2. From the ftp site, download SASSI.exe into your /SASSI folder.
  3. Open the /SASSI/Suppdata folder.
  4. Download platforms.plt into your /SASSI/Suppdata folder.

For the supporting software, see Doug Kennedy in the field for a DVD. If your SASSI Data and your SASSI GPS utilities are more recent than 1 May, you are up-to-date.

If you have not already downloaded SASSI....


Contact Erik Rasmussen for instructions and/or an installation DVD

GeoData...


Contact Erik Rasmussen for a GeoData DVD

Changes in Version 15May10a


  1. Changed the GUI so the tab area can be dragged to different sizes. This improves the scrolling of the contents of tabs, and makes it possible for users to modify/improve the display of chat.
  2. Made the default address of annotations "ALL_TEAMS", and added a notification to alert the user if they forgot to fill in the address list.
  3. Crash-proofed against corrupted chat and annotation files.
  4. Many changes related to drawing speed and performance. Reduced the amount of drawing by a factor of about 50.
  5. Greatly reduced or eliminated the presence of ellipsis ("...") in chat items.

Known Issues in Version 15May10a


  1. Hiway symbols should be atop roads, but they are interleaved.
  2. When SASSI is restarted, the map can jump south of the position it had when SASSI was terminated. This seems to happen after rubber-band zooming, and perhaps other map manipulations.
  3. Mobile radar data has not been road-tested. If there are SASSI pathologies related to mobile radar data, we will keep the data off of the server.
  4. SASSI can still crash after several hours of use; this may not be resolvable.
  5. Retraction and deletion of annotations is broken but should be fixable soon.
  6. Management of radar composites is not quite right.

Changes in Version 05May10a


  1. Rewrote of some portions of the GIS code for more efficient zoom and pan. This change should be pretty noticeable to all users.
  2. Addition of "zoom way out" button... the tiny magnifying glass... that zooms by a factor of 2.0
  3. Modified the Zoom Out button to zoom by a factor of 1.5 instead of 1.2. This provides faster stepping out to larger scale.
  4. Stickiness of detail buttons. If you override the SASSI-determined detail, the user-chosen detail will stick, and the "Auto" detail button will turn off. If you wish to let SASSI determine the detail level, this is done by pressing the Auto button.
  5. Fixed the bug in the code that moves the map with the vehicle
  6. Re-activated the readout for the SASSIburger tool that shows the baseline length and orientation
  7. Replaced "idle" status message with a message giving the SASSI version number
  8. Added a notification message to the user if their computer clock needs to be synched to a network time standard
  9. Fixed bug in code that did not update the team position or color of team location marker
  10. Fixed fractured team icon display
  11. Fixed the bug that did not record team position correctly, and put the team near Keystone Res. when asking for vehicle-following map.
  12. Fixed cursor that is displayed outside the map area.
  13. Fixed the white boxes that were appearing around the teams when they updated, although I truly have no clue what the essence of this bug is.
  14. Fixed audible alarm for chat, and added an eight-second yellow box around the sender.
  15. Fixed a crash that occurred when a chat arrived from a team not on the platforms list.
  16. Fixed a bug that was preventing chat from being restored after stopping/restarting SASSI.
  17. Probably fixed the bug with dropped markers, but I won't know until the teams start using this new version.
  18. Fixed the one-shot radar playback. Note that SASSI attempts to provide a smooth animation even if it cannot show every frame because it is doing other tasks. So sometimes the playback button will show a more complete animation than at other times.

Known Issues in Version 05May10a


  1. The terrain sometimes disappears. It seems this is when the rubber band is used to zoom in on part of a scene. I do not understand this bug, but I will continue to look at it over the next few days.
  2. I am not convinced that team data will update when new data arrives, but it seems to be working.
  3. Hiway symbols should be atop roads, but they are interleaved.
  4. When SASSI is restarted, the map can jump south of the position it had when SASSI was terminated. This seems to happen after rubber-band zooming, and perhaps other map manipulations.
  5. Mobile radar data has not been road-tested. If there are SASSI pathologies related to mobile radar data, we will keep the data off of the server.

Hardware and Operating System information


Users are successfully using SASSI under Windows XP, Vista, and Windows7. There are numerous reported issues with the compatablity of GPS units and the SASSI support tracking application. See Doug Kennedy for details and fixes.

Training/Tutorials

The following are short Quicktime movie tutorials. Let me know any questions that arise from viewing them. They cover items that are new for 2010, or perhaps weren't well understood or utilized last year.

Visibility of Data Types (11 MB Quicktime movie) This tutorial talks about the layer tab, and how to hide or unhide entire categories of data depending on your particular field needs. For example, some teams will find terrain data useful for their operations, and others will not. It also talks about raising or lowering the levels in case certain data are obscuring other data that need to be seen.

Setting Appearance (16 MB Quicktime movie) Many of the elements of the display can be customized by the user in this version. A pretty decent set of default properties is provided, but some users may have particular needs. For example, color-blindness could be accommodated through these properties. I forgot to say in this tutorial that any property changes you make are saved session-to-session. If you get in trouble with these, I can tell you how to restore the default settings.

Playback (7 MB Quicktime movie) A very short tutorial on how to play back any data that has been received in your SASSI during this season, or even last year if you still have the data in the Historical folder.

Mobile Mesonet display (12 MB Quicktime movie) Mobile mesonet data can be displayed as latest observation from each platform, or the observations can be shown in their storm-relative locations and gradually aged from the display.

Radar Data display (23 MB Quicktime movie) Radar data can be advected with a user-set storm-motion vector, or can be left at the position reported by the radar at observation time. The storm-motion vector gives a somewhat better idea of the location of particular storm features in real time. Further, historical data can be shown as ghost images which allows the user to get a sense of the motion and evolution of the storm.

Managing Annotations (21 MB Quicktime movie) Talks about how to produce and edit annotations, how to address them to particular users, how to retract annotations you no longer want others to see, and how to remove any annotations you have received from your own display.

Efficiency tip


Since some teams have customized their Settings->Appearance, I will not distribute my own settings to the web site to avoid over-writing user customizations. However, for performance, I do suggest the following changes:
When you are at county detail, turn off the display of Lakes and Ponds, Waterways, and Ditch or Canal.
When you are Regional detail, turn off the display of Primary Highways.

New for 2010

  • A button in the toolbar will loop the last 30 minutes of radar, if available, once-through each time it is pressed.
  • Drawing Performance. I have removed the previous open-source GIS underpinnings of SASSI, and replaced them with a very efficient mapping approach. More importantly, I have switched to the Qt Graphics Framework for drawing and managing drawable items. This has significantly improved SASSI's drawing performance, especially in the area of panning and zooming.
  • Data Performance. I have upped the ingest timing to check for new data every one second, instead of every five to fifteen. This, combined with communications improvements that Doug Kennedy is making, should improve the freshness of a lot of the data, perhaps especially chat.
  • Terrain. The terrain information is now displayed, and this should be especially useful to teams that desire high ground, or a particular shape to the terrain, for their missions.
  • Customization. All appearance items are now user-configurable, with customizations maintained between sessions.
  • Playback. This has been rewritten and looks pretty nice. The user sets the start and stop times of the playback, and SASSI looks through the archives to find the data that are needed. This should suffice for good quick-look analysis and mission review. Playback runs at least at 15x realtime without complaining; that's the fastest that I've tested it.
  • Radar. Radar data compositing has been improved. Time-to-space conversion is now enabled, which allows the radar echoes to move once per minute or whenever fresh data arrive. Old echo positions are drawn with highly transparent "ghost" echoes if the user desires, allowing the user to get a sense of motion and evolution. SMART-Radar images are being incorporated through a new low-bandwidth approach, as are DOW radar images.
  • GeoData. GeoData has been compressed further into Qt data objects, and all the data for each 1x1 degree area is in one file. This allows for significantly faster reading. The source data, in a multitude of formats, is still available from Rasmussen Systems if a user has need for a special application.
  • Drill-down. Clicking on a spot on the map produces a readout of information about everything below that click... road names, terrain height, radar images being used, etc.
  • Annotations. All users now have the ability to generate annotations, even if it's only for sending to themselves. Annotations are addressable just like chat. The editor that places items in the annotation has been rewritten to make it a lot friendlier. The user can hide or delete unwanted annotations. And the author can even "retract" an annotation they are not proud of, or that has become stale and needs to be updated.
  • Dual-doppler lobes. In addition to the "SASSIburger" for experimenting with coverage ideas, dual-Doppler lobes can now be written into annotations just by stretching a line between the two radars.
  • 88D and TDWR locations are marker with icons to facilitate consideration of including them in radar deployment design.
  • Town and county names are displayed consistently for improved navigation.
  • Where Is? By clicking a "?" on the toolbar, you can enter any feature or team name to search for, including just a fragment of the name, and SASSI will show you where that item or team is located by drawing a purple box around it.