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Home Updates Garden Fish Photos Climate Prediction .Net [Updated on 9th July 2006]

[Screenshot from CPView]
CPView showing the local weather around the world

Latest Release is v2.13, released on 9th July 2006
*** BOINC Compatible *** *** BBC Compatible ***
Now works with the BBC Climate Prediction Project !!!

Download v2.13 for Windows : [] CPView2.13.zip (Zipped = 1.1Mb)
Download MSVC++ 2003 .NET Source v2.8 : [] CPViewSource_2.8.zip (Zipped = 1.7Mb)

Index

What's New?

This section describes what's new in the last 3 releases. For a more complete list, refer to the development history.

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Introduction

CPView is an application designed to let you view all of the data produced by your CPDN experiments and to view your live model as it is running.

Further down this page you can find out in more detail how it works and how you can use it to simply view your experiment, or produce more complex analysis. For more serious analysis, you may find the official IDL Visualisation Application more suitable. It can be downloaded from the official CPDN website : [[] CPDN website ].

I don't know how many people are using CPView but it has been received very well by the CPDN Community. Discussion of this application amongst the CPDN user group can be viewed on their discussion pages here : [[] CPDN Topic 1050].

Graphics from CPView was also used by the BBC in an online article on 22nd June 2004, discussing the science behind the Holywood blockbuster 'The Day After Tomorrow'. A gif copy of the article can be found here : [ BBC Article].

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Installation

BOINC & Classic

Unfortunately I no longer have access to Installshield so the new installation is just a .zip file:

  1. Extract the files to a directory of your choice
  2. Move the two DLLs into your Windows/System32 directory
  3. Double click on CPView.exe
Note: If the application starts but the title says 'Unable to retieve data', you may need to manually set the path to your data as follows.
  • Open the CPView.ini file with a text editor
  • At the bottom of the file is a line which reads

    BOINCDirectory=

    Change this to be the directory where the CPDN project is installed on your machine. It is important to use double backslashes as directory separators.

    For example,

    BOINCDirectory=C:\\Program Files\\BOINC\\projects\\climateprediction.net

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Data

The bulk of data produced by your model is stored in seven different file types, between them holding 93 sets of data, all of which can be viewed with CPView. A full index is available here [CPDN Data Dictionary].

These files are stored in two places.

In addition, there are some files stored in the dataout/restart, dataout/restartmonth and dataout/restartyear directories. These hold a detailed snapshot of the model used to restart in the case of an error. There is unfortunately no data specification for these folders and so only some of the data is accessible.

The following data types can be displayed:

[] Realtime data direct from the CPDN model.
[] 2-dimensional scalar data such as 'Wind Mixing Energy into Sea'
[] 2-dimensional vector data such as 'Surface and Boundary Layer Wind Stress'
[] 1-dimensional zonal scalar data such as 'LW Radiation TOA Clear Sky'
[] 2-dimensional zonal scalar data such as 'Air Temperature on Pressure Levels'
[] 2-dimensional zonal vector data such as 'Wind on Pressure Levels'
[] 3 dimensional restart data

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Buttons

Display

The following options are available:

Cells Polygons Contours Smooth Chart Icosahedron


 
3D Lighting Coastline Terrain Grid Decoration


Some of the active data is in multiple layers which can be viewed separately:

This represents either low-level cloud, or sea-ice
This represents snow. It also represents mid-level cloud in BOINC.
This represents high-level cloud


When viewing charts, you also have some control over how they are displayed:

These toggle the visibility of the available phases.
This toggles the monthly chart data.
This toggles the visibility of the key.

Not also that from version 2.10 you also have the option to view up to 5 charts simultaneously, and you can produce charts for specific regions using the existing zoom icon.



In addition, there are a number of 'extras' which can be displayed:

Local Weather World Cities Home Zoom Pastel colours
No
Picture		 No
Picture		 No
Picture

Also, in order to make it easy to export images for use when making movies, the window can be resized to a number of standard frame sizes:

208x160
320x240
640x480
720x576

Finally, there is an options dialog which can be used to alter the ambient lighting, transparency and rotation of the globe as well as setting your home location and the area of zoom.

Display settings

Once you have the display set how you like it, open the display settings dialog (shown above), check the 'Save values as default' box and click OK. The next time you open CPView it will start in this configuration.

Navigation

When you load a file from a directory it will contain a number of different sets of data for a single year. If it is seasonal data, it will contain 4 frames in each set and if it is monthly data it will contain 12 frames. In addition, when you open a file, CPView automatically loads all other files of the same type from the same directory so that you can view them together.

NOTE - Only files for the same phase are loaded. If you want to compare data from different phases, open one file from each phase. You will get a window for each phase but each will have access to the data for all phases.

By default, the first frame from the first set of data is used for the display but you can cycle through the other available data sets and frames using the navigation buttons which operate similar to a video recorder.

To select a different data set:

Previous series. Will be disabled if you are on the first series.
Next series. Will be disabled if you are on the last series.

To select a different frame (season or month):

Previous frame. Will be disabled if you are on the first frame.
Next frame. Will be disabled if you are on the last frame.
Previous year. Will be disabled if you are on the first year.
Next year. Will be disabled if you are on the last year.
Plays all available frames for the current series.
Pauses playback.
Stops playback and returns to the first frame.

Recording images

To save images, you must first ensure that you have a C:/temp directory. Files are saved to this directory with a unique generated filename.

Creates a single bitmap.
Plays the entire series, recording a bitmap for each frame.
Saves the current frame as a comma separated file which can be viewed in Excel to investigate individual cell values.

Creating a movie can be acheived by first setting the window size to one of the standard sizes, and then recording a series of images. These images can then be built into a movie using 3rd party tools such as 'Windows Movie Maker'.

For an example movie, refer to the 'Extra Downloads' section below.

Analysis

There are four simple additions to CPView which allow some analysis of the data. The first two allow you to fix the display to show only the maximum or minimum value for each cell. To use these, navigate to the first frame, click min or max, and press play ( or 'next frame').

Displays the minimum value for each cell so far.
Displays the maximum value for each cell so far.

The second two allow you to show the difference between the current frame and a reference frame. To use these, navigate to your reference frame and click M. Then navigate to the frame you wish to compare and click M-.

NOTE - When displaying a difference, a default scale of -100 to 100 is used. This can be changed from the 'Options' window.
Copies the current data into memory, subtracts the contents from the current display, recalls the contents and clears the contents of memory slot 1
Copies the current data into memory, subtracts the contents from the current display, recalls the contents and clears the contents of memory slot 2

NOTE :
The memory functions are relatively simplistic and do not remember extra information such as what scale was used to display the data originally. You will therefore generate nonsense if you try to subtract pressure information from temperature information for example.

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Viewing Multiple Series

Version 2.10 introduced the ability to view multiple series so that they can be compared to check for correlation. By default, when viewing the active model, only a single series is selected in order to reduce the time taken to process the graphics, which detracts from the time available to run the model. It should be noted that in order to avoid compatability problems, all of the drawing code is software based and doesn't use any of the advanced graphics functions which may be supported by your graphics card.

The following toolbar buttons control the multi-series view:

Switches the multi-view display on and off.
Opens the multi-series selection dialog.

For the active display, some sensible settings are pre-selected. From top to bottom, these are:

This should give you a display similar to this:

You can have up to 5 series selected, each of which is defined through the settings dialog shown below. You can select the series, the drawing method ( cell, filled contour, contour or smooth ), whether to use string or pastel colours, and whether to use a specific palette. Note that from 2.10 onwards, the smooth drawing method uses transparency which produces nicer images but is much more processor intensive.

Finally, in the chart view, turning on the combination view will display up to 5 charts simultaneously for easier comparison, as shown below.

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Extra Downloads

Sample Movie

The following movie was created with Windows Movie Maker using images saved from CPView.

[Movie] Movie of 'Heat flux latent surface' for 15 years of phase 3 of run 11145

Sample cut-out and keep experiments

[Example icosohedron]

Click on the following images to open a full size image. Save the full size version and print it out. Then cut out and glue to create a 3D model of your experiment.

[Icosohedron 1] Icosohedron1.gif (Pressure polygons - 127Kb)

[Icosohedron 2] Icosohedron2.gif (Cloud polygons - 105Kb)

[Icosohedron 3] Icosohedron3.gif (Temperature contours - 48Kb)

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Development History

21/July/2005 CPView 2.12 - Further improved the drawing methods for contour and boundary displays and city labelling. Fix for THC experiments.
20/July/2005 CPView 2.11 - Improved the drawing methods for contour and boundary displays.
19/July/2005 CPView 2.10 - Added multi-series views to improve analysis of interactions between variables.
8/July/2005 CPView 2.8 - Improved chart appearance and altered code to make it more extensible in the future.
6/July/2005 CPView 2.7 - Statically linked to avoid DLL problems. Improved the display a bit and included support for the 5-phase Sulphur Cycle Beta.
1/July/2005 CPView 2.6 - BOINC support added and *lots* of display enhancements - faster and cleaner. Also added lots more world cities to the map.
28/October/2004 CPView 2.3 - Significant improvements to multi-layer data display, user preferences and memory functions.
05/August/2004 CPView 2.0 - Major new release including zoom facility and a local weather summary.
21/July/2004 Added an option to create an icosahedron which can be printed, cut out and made into a 3D model.
27/May/2004 Bug fixes and enhancements to the memory functions.
19/May/2004 Added support for the new THC slowdown phase.
19/Feb/2004 Improved the rotation options so you can see the poles.
18/Feb/2004 Added the memory functions.
13/Feb/2004 Added the contour rendering option.
3/Feb/2004 Major new code to read the NetCDF files from the archive directory so you can look at old experiments and create multi-phase charts.
7/Jan/2004 Completed monitoring of all the live data including multi-level clouds.
18/Dec/2003 Added the polygon rendering option.
17/Dec/2003 Added the chart view and rotated the 3D restart display.
13/Dec/2003 CPView v1.5. Added a vector coastline, fixed bugs and much more. Included a first attempt at the 3D data in the restart files.
8/Dec/2003 CPView v1.5. Added support for zonal data from the .ph files.
7/Dec/2003 CPView v1.4. Added support for vector data such as wind, and the decorations.
4/Dec/2003 CPView v1.2. Added the terrain underlay.
3/Dec/2003 CPView v1.1, an MFC version of the spreadsheet so that anyone could run it. Added support for multiple files.
5/Nov/2003 The first CPView, an Excel application which displayed the maps by changing the fill colours and patterns in a spreadsheet.
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Additional Information