K-McPheron Thanks; here's a recent further-streamlined thought I have about this. There can be one unified list that contains preset items for real-time vs loop selection and for duration/length. So, "Real-time (1 hour)", "Real-time (3 hour)", "Forecast ..." (3, 6, 12, 18, 24, 48, 96, etc), instead of clutter with separate controls for timeline selection plus duration.
If there is a true need to have an exact odd time, such as a 49 hour forecast instead of a 48, then a separate menu/screen can allow the user to customize the combinations and order in the main drop down.
This discretization of the time options has a few benefits. It requires the user to consciously select a timeframe and allows me to optimize content for certain presets rather than variable ranges. For instance, certainly in the broadcast/industrial version but perhaps also in the standard subscription, it may be possible to allow more than 6 hours. If I had two discrete "12" and "6" hour selections, I can foreordain temporal resolution scales for all products at that duration. A tapered scheme could dynamically transition, say, National Radar frames, from every 6 mins for the last 60 minutes, to every 12mins for the T-1 to T-2 hrs, etc. From 6 to 12, even if the temporal resolution was downscaled to one full hour frames, at least that offers more useful info at the same bandwidth/memory cost as higher temporal resolutions at shorter lengths.
Here is a screenshot of the tool bar menu where the timeline mode + duration selector could be. Enjoy also the progress shot on the multi-maps rendering infrastructure, now having attained the level of being able to render the terrain with multiple camera views simultaneously.