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How the Weather Channel Made That Insane Hurricane Florence Storm Surge Animation (wired.com)
The Weather Channel's 3-D, room-encompassing depiction of the Hurricane Florence storm surge took many by surprise on Friday (Second video). It doesn't tell, it shows, more bracingly than you'd think would be possible on a meteorological update, writes Wired. Here's how they did it. CNET: In one video, meteorologist Erika Navarro demonstrates what a progressive storm surge would mean at a human level. (Storm surge is simply the "abnormal rise of water generated by a storm" that is "produced by water being pushed toward the shore by the force of the winds," according to the National Hurricane Center.) "Storm surge is going to be potentially life-threatening for some areas along the US coastline," Navarro says. Then she demonstrates what's described as a "reasonable, worst-case scenario for areas along North Carolina." Here's where the video gets heart-in-throat scary. As Navarro stands and speaks, the weather maps behind her dissolve away, and she is shown standing in a computer-generated neighborhood. The CGI water rises behind her, setting a red car afloat and flooding homes.
[...] The Weather Channel has been using augmented reality since 2015. This year, it partnered with content and technology provider The Future Group and its impressive Immersive Mixed Reality technology, which uses Unreal Engine software. The tech debuted on TWC in June, when meteorologist Jim Cantore used it to walk viewers through what would happen if a tornado hit the channel's own studios. A demo showing the power of lightning followed in July. Reaction to the hurricane explainer has been overwhelmingly positive, said Michael Potts, Weather Channel's vice president of design. "It was created to evoke an automatic visceral reaction, to imagine that this could be real," Potts said. "And people are sharing it with friends and family as a warning tool. The amount of engagement across all of our platforms has been some of the highest we've ever seen." The neighborhood Navarro is standing in looks real, but it's all virtual graphics created in a new green-screen studio built at the channel's Atlanta headquarters. "All the graphics you see, from the cars, the street, the houses and the entire neighborhood are created using the Unreal Engine -- they are not real," Potts says. "The circle she is standing in is the presentation area, it's a 'safe' space that is not affected by the weather. ... The maps and data are all real-time and the atmospheric conditions are driven by the forecast." More on this here.
[...] The Weather Channel has been using augmented reality since 2015. This year, it partnered with content and technology provider The Future Group and its impressive Immersive Mixed Reality technology, which uses Unreal Engine software. The tech debuted on TWC in June, when meteorologist Jim Cantore used it to walk viewers through what would happen if a tornado hit the channel's own studios. A demo showing the power of lightning followed in July. Reaction to the hurricane explainer has been overwhelmingly positive, said Michael Potts, Weather Channel's vice president of design. "It was created to evoke an automatic visceral reaction, to imagine that this could be real," Potts said. "And people are sharing it with friends and family as a warning tool. The amount of engagement across all of our platforms has been some of the highest we've ever seen." The neighborhood Navarro is standing in looks real, but it's all virtual graphics created in a new green-screen studio built at the channel's Atlanta headquarters. "All the graphics you see, from the cars, the street, the houses and the entire neighborhood are created using the Unreal Engine -- they are not real," Potts says. "The circle she is standing in is the presentation area, it's a 'safe' space that is not affected by the weather. ... The maps and data are all real-time and the atmospheric conditions are driven by the forecast." More on this here.
>> I don't get my Weather information for the Weather channel anymore.
This is SlashDot. No one here even has the "Weather Channel" anymore: that went away (along with useless shit like ESPN) when we cut the cable years ago.
Sitting here in Wilmimgton and this storm is a BIG nothing burger.
These idiot goverent officials and news sources really need to stop with the hype. CNN is now Cat Null News. You can view webcams from the Baldhead Island Ferry out of Southport which is 30 minutes away.
And what does it look like? A bad thunderstorm.
The more they hype the wolficane, the more people will ignore these storms until the real deadly category 5 storm hits. This is negligence bar none.
"The neighborhood Navarro is standing in looks real..."
Seriously? So there are people out there who will view this animation and will need to be told that it is not real? They'll think someone 'filmed reality'?
No wonder we have the government that we do....
As somebody who lived through Harvey, please fuck off. The more people who can be made to understand the effects of storm surge, the better. This is not hype. This is trying to educate people who might otherwise "hunker down" and end up dead, or spread emergency resources needlessly thin in an attempt to rescue their ass later.
Here's how to make it even better. Make a slit in the greenscreen and put a bucket of water on a chair behind it. She plunges her arm into the slit, and her arm disappears into the wall of water video. When she pulls her arm out, her arm is dripping wet, and she's holding a rubber fish (flopping as she subtly shakes it) that was at the bottom of the bucket.
Given who you're quoting, the statistical liklihood of them being wrong would obviously be fucking miniscule... which leaves me as the asshole who's (as someone already observed) not only an asshole, but also apparently wrong... which, at least according to my own system, is actually far worse.