Play holds while a layer loads the frame for its time, and the bar's only
sign of it was a faint pulse, so a stopped handle read as a stall. The
bubble now shows a small spinner beside the time while play is held. It
comes on once a hold lasts long enough to notice and stays through a run of
slow frames, so neither a quick frame nor the gaps between frames flash it.
With layers of very different reach on together, a month of launches and
a few hours of lightning, the short-range ticks were crushed at the end of
the one shared track. Scroll or pinch on the track now zooms it around the
handle, plus and minus zoom from the keyboard, and zero or a double-click
shows it all again. Everything still plays together; zooming only changes
what the track shows, and the view follows the handle as it plays, steps or
is left behind by now. A scrub's live edge goes by the stretch shown, so a
zoomed track can land minutes from now, and a double-click or pinch puts
back the time its first press moved.
Play no longer runs ahead of the data. The world clock gains a wait, which
holds continuous play where it is while a layer loads what the time needs,
and a gate, which keeps play from passing a time a layer has yet to load.
Weather gates play at its next frame and waits there until the frame shows,
so every frame is seen however fast play runs; it waits no more than eight
seconds on a frame that never comes, and takes a wait only when its frames
change. Play pressed while a frame loads waits for it too. A scrub still
drops what loads and moves on.
The bar loses its long date and the dates at its ends: the time rides in a
bubble over the handle, which pulses while play waits, and the bar runs
left to right in every language. Play starts at real time.
A speed menu beside play offers real time, an hour, a day or a week a
second, a day a second to start with. A speed chosen while playing applies
at once; chosen while weather's own replay steps its frames, it takes
playback over from where it is. Play starts again from the top only at live
or at the very end, so a pause just before the end plays on. On phones the
menu sits beside the track, a full-size target.
The timeline shows whenever a layer with time to show is on, live or not.
Its track runs over the time those layers cover, reaching to now, with a
tick for each launch or frame and a handle to drag; arrows step between the
ticks, and a scrub to now goes live. The bar sits along the bottom of the
screen, and the dock and everything anchored above it rise by its height;
clean view, recording and the cockpit put it away with the dock.
A bar above the command dock, like a video player's: play and pause on
the left, the world time's date and time in UTC beside it, and Live to
return. It stays hidden while live, so Core looks as before until weather
history is scrubbed or replayed, a host moves the clock, or a link made
away from live is opened. Adds the pause and play_arrow glyphs and the
strings in every catalog.
Sameh Khamis