[Xastir] Map/ weather radar question

[Bennett, Joe]

Tom Russo wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 16, 2008 at 11:50:21AM -0600, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <ka3nam at daminternet.biz> flavor, containing:
>   
>> I have a laptop with a few state shp files that I downloaded from 
>> xastir.tamu.edu a while back... Everthing works fine except when I have 
>> weather radar enabed and it downloads every 300 to 500 seconds... When I 
>> have the map zoom out to a large zoom level (e.g. 1300+) my laptop just 
>> cycles through geting weather radar and then reloading the maps off the 
>> DVDROM... Then almost immediately, starts again... It spend so much time 
>> worrying about the maps, APRS just gets lost in the process... Is there a 
>> configuration that can just download the weather radar data and not have to 
>> update the map every time?
>>     
>
> Not with shapefiles.  This is the downside to having Xastir render your maps
> from dvdrom each time.
>
> As I see it you have a couple options:
>
>  1) Decrease the refresh rate of the weather maps by editing the .geo file
>  2) Decrease the number of maps you have rendered at high zooms
>  3) Split your shapefiles up by attributes (i.e. major roads in one file,
>     street-level detail in another) and tell xastir to skip those in the
>     more detailed files when at high zooms
>  4) If you're not zooming and panning around a lot, you might consider 
>     pre-rendering a static map by turning off all of the station display stuff
>     and taking a snapshot --- it'll save a .png and a .geo that you can move
>     to your maps directory and use as a static raster image.  Use that as
>     your base layer at high zooms (telling xastir not to render shapefiles at
>     that zoom), and overlay the weather on that instead.  It will be very fast,
>     because it won't be doing any calculation at all.  It will be ugly at
>     any zoom level other than the one you created it at, though.
>
>   

Thanks Tom,

I think a static map may be the best option... Should have thought of 
that on my own... Thanks for the advise...



-Joe
KA3NAM