Hi All,
It's been a long time and I hope everyone is well and taking care in these difficult times.
After six months of work, Weather Gods 2.4 is finally done.
The reason for taking such a long time is I had to re-write the app from the ground up in order to support current and future iPhone and iPad devices released by Apple. The old WG was hand-crafted for every new device Apple released and Apple have informed their developers that all screens have to adapt and they wont accept new updates from apps that don't do this.
That was the hard part done.
Meanwhile, I have taken the opportunity to add some much requested features.
In no particular order:
1. New sounds for cloud, wind, rain, snow, fog, hail and UV. All sounds are recorded in stereo and the general consensus from the beta testers is they are much better.
These are commercial sounds which we have licensed, along with some sounds we mixed together from the commercial versions. It's been extremely difficult finding, listening and picking the sounds. I literally have downloaded 100s of sounds for auditioning.
2. Ambient sounds. Depending on the weather, you will hear additional sounds that add to the atmosphere of the sound of the weather. There are many different sounds and I will be adding more over the next couple of months. I wont list them as I think half the fun is discovering them. Some are very weather and seasonal specific so you might have to wait six months or more to hear them :)
3. Whilst on sounds. There is a sound mixer in settings. You can turn off individual primary weather sounds and adjust their volume.
4. Weather wheel. Completely re-written, you can swipe through the wheel using single finger or triple swipe up / down to scroll.
5. Timeline. Also completely re-written. You are free to swipe left/right by hour in any direction, and back to observation data should you wish to access that.
6. Moon information. Re-written and updated with extra data such as azimuth, meridian information, altitude, distance etc
7. Weather alerts can now be set for individual places by double tapping on the weather alerts icon. Previously you found this option with the regular notifications.
8. WG will provide helpful sign posting in notification section of settings if you (or iOS) has disabled notifications. If notifications are not coming through then it's worth a check here.
9. Same for location settings and follow me. Much easier to switch on / off and check the settings.
10. Launch options. You can choose to launch into the Pantheon (the old home screen), the weather wheel or straight into favorites. Can be configured in settings, under general.
11. County alerts. These can be toggled for those who aren't interested in receiving the county alerts. US only at the moment and on by default.
12. WG Voiceover "animations". The WG on the Pantheon screen have a lot of animations, they look around, fall asleep, follow your touch, blink etc. I have added Voiceover renditions of what they are up to. Feedback from the beta testers has been mixed, so if you find them annoying, then you can switch them off in settings, under general.
13. Full support for accessible font sizes.
14. UK weather alerts are back.
15. New watch modular complication called weather highlights. This complication delivers timely highlights about the weather throughout the day.
Changes afoot!
During this time, IBM have unfortunately given us notice that they are terminating our contract from November. They have decided that other weather apps using their data are deemed to be competitors and they don't wish to continue offering us the data.
With Dark Sky being bought by Apple, we are having to find a new weather data provider. I am currently seriously looking at using AerisWeather.
AerisWeather provide more than just the data we have been using. Depending on the data plan, we can have air quality, lightning strikes, 15 day hourly and daily forecasts, nearby storm cells etc
Once we have integrated the current data requirements from AerisWeather, then we will, unfortunately, have to switch to a subscription model as the current paid app is not sustainable.
However, existing paid app users wont be asked to take up the basic subscription, which should give you everything you currently have. I hope people understand why we are having to go down this route.
Finally, I would like to say a massive thank you to the beta testers who have been invaluable with their feedback and bugs.
If you enjoy Weather Gods, and haven't left a review, then we would love it if you could spare the time please to leave a review. These are so important for Indy devs trying to find a foothold in the App Store search algorithms and rankings.
We hope you enjoy the new update and welcome all feedback.
Take care
Scott
Comments
Language and region
Hi Scott,
My language and region are set to English and Canada respectively. I also checked a few web sites that show my ip address and location and they report the correct location.
Again, WG was working correctly prior to the latest update with the same phone settings.
Sorry to be a pain.
Language and region
Thanks Frank,
Would you like to be part of the beta?
I can add some more debug information to the next beta to try and figure out what's going on?
Lightning notifications
I would love this feature and would subscribe for it. Also if you could give any more info on Lightning such as how many strikes in a certain radius maybe or some thing that we just can't have access to because we can't see a radar would be helpful! Thank you for any improvements with this app!
Lightning
I also would love to have lightning info and notifications.
I already have apps that give me a lot of lightning info at least here in Europe such as how many strikes within a set radius; instant alerts of strikes and the distance to the nearest strike, but there are some things that I have never been able to access. These are things like coordinates and geocode info of strikes. A list view of strikesRather than having to try and find them on a map which is very hard and slow to do with voiceover and not always affective. Also direction information to strikes not just distance. This would be invaluable to me as a big weather enthusiast. I would pay for this info gladly.
Just a few thoughts from me
Chris
Allergens
Hey Scott! Would you consider adding some more details to the pollen? Like pollen count is 8.3 high? And also would you consider adding mold? The type of detail I’m talking about for Paul in though, is like the type of pollens that are out. Like ragweed, grass, etc. etc. And some pollens affect people people more than others.
Like for example, a lot of times tree pollen, and ragweed are the ones that really get to me.
Thank you! I can’t wait to see what happens with Weather Gods next!
new sounds
I just opened weather gods for the first time since the latest update and the cricket sounds signifying nighttime are so loud that I can barely hear voiceover. Is there an easy way to remedy that? As I said this is the first time I've opened the app since the update, I may also have to lower the volume of the other sounds as well but I'm not sure yet.
Lightning notifications
I too would love to see lightning notifications. You guys are doing a great job! Keep it up! So far, I think that this is the best weather app.
Beta
Hi Scott,
Sure, I will try the beta. Where can I find the Test Flight link?
Beta
Thanks Frank,
I you send us an email (there is the feedback link in settings in the app) then I can send you an invite.
new sounds
Thanks for the feedback Troy on the sounds and Voiceover.
I will have a look and see if I can do something to improve it.
Allergens
Hi Dawn,
Yes, I would hope the API would give the different types of pollen. I've just started on integrating the basic data at the moment.
Lightning
Hi All,
Here's what the API documentation says about the lightning data
The lightning data includes information on the type of strike, location, polarity, and amperage. Options are available for both cloud to ground and intracloud (cloud to cloud) pulse types.
The maximum radius value that may be utilized is 25 miles.
Lighting strike/pulse information is available for the last 5 minutes.
I was going to bring that…
I was going to bring that up as well. 50 percent is extremly loud. That sounds to my ear like 100 percent. Plus, I can hear artifacting as if these things were sampled at a bitrate of 64kbps stereo which would be 32 bit per channel. I hear this in the louder sounds like the wind and rain etc. I realise space is an issue but still. I'm kind of an audio snob. Lol!
Thanks for that. I'm alergic…
Thanks for that. I'm alergic to pretty much everything here, so for me not to have an asthma attack I pretty much have to look at that kind of stuff. Thanks for all that you are doing.
Sounds
Thanks for the feedback on the sounds.
Almost all of the sounds I had to pay for and they were all high quality stereo. However, the size of the app would have been massive, so unfortunately I had to run them through a sound app to make the file sizes smaller.
There is an option in future to allow a download of the original high quality sounds. Apple have a mechanism for this and the sound assets are stored on Apple servers and the app pulls them down.
Each ambient sound within the app internally has its own volume setting and I can tweak these if people can let me know which sounds are too loud.
There's also a separate volume slider for the ambient sounds if that helps at all?
I love the separate volume…
I love the separate volume sounds! I've turned some up and others down, and left others at the default. So much more flexibility!
Still No Notifications Here
Hi Scott and all. I just updated to the latest build of WG, and love it. However, I am still not getting the weather notifications. I've checked all my settings, including the ones in Apple's settings app. When still at my parents' place I briefly saw the notification sounds listed and heard them. But now I don't even see those. I turned on cellular data so that my voicemail notification would go off again in hopes of resolving the issue, but no dice. Should I just wait until things are transferred over to the new weather provider and see what happens? I'm honestly rather puzzled at this. But WG still remains my go-to weather app aside from the one that comes pre-installed on the iPhone.
Still No Notifications Here
Hi Ekaj,
There isn't any reason I know of why you're not receiving notifications. I just checked our dashboard and all greens.
Please send us an email from within the app and I can help try and solve.