I want WSV3 to become the most sophisticated tactical mesoanalysis software meant to serve the human user for informational insights into actual atmospheric reality under the most constrained, demanding, mission-critical circumstances.

On September 4th, I arrived at four major guiding use-cases, in descending order of severity, to serve as the cornerstones of next generation WSV3's design and development:

1. Tactical/Field/Storm Chasing

WSV3 2025 must be foremost a robust tactical mesoanalysis application. "Tactical" means mission-critical stability and low power usage. It means efficient software programming with uncompromising obsession over performance and optional performance modes to save CPU and GPU resources, and therefore battery power, in an ultimate circumstance of energy-constrained environment. At this most severe and compelling level, extra CPU cycles amount to a shorter battery lifetime which amounts to sooner impending loss of real-time atmospheric mesoanalysis information in a tactical setting. However unlikely these circumstances are does not matter. Robust tactical mesoanalysis software obsessing over speed, memory/CPU/GPU use, and performance might be useless. But whether it's useless is irrelevant: it is the most demanding use-case, and thus comes first on the list. Two other plausible tactical ramifications of the weather graphics software design can also be contemplated: bandwidth usage (the heavier/more bloated the data files, the slower they will download in a bandwidth-constrained environment, such as using cell-phone LTE WiFi while storm chasing or during power outage) and competition for system resources among other applications. If the user is running another piece of software which is an inefficient resource hog, this could plausibly increase the margin by which WSV3's performance is tactically significant if the other piece of software is critical.

2. Professional Meteorological Workstation/Operational Forecasting/Nowcasting Workflow

Having progressed from the tactical field scenario necessitating the quality, stability, and efficiency of the software, the second most overarching and demanding use case turns the attention to the data and functionality of the program. There are companies that sell expensive meteorological hardware workstation PCs to governments, agencies, and militaries - systems that were designed before the advent of modern GPUs, Amazon Web Services, and modern internet connection speeds.

WSV3 must necessarily offer multiple-view-panel (dual/quad) and even multiple separate concurrent map support with independent camera views and a flexible, rearrangeable, docked/tabbed panel framing system to support workflow needs for professional meteorologists.

This category is essentially "GPU AWIPS" on baseline consumer Windows PCs with Direct3D graphics software, an internet connection, and WSV3 2025's eventual embedded data services.

This use case requires the development of WSV3 2025 to incorporate real-world knowledge and industry info on operational mesoanalysis workflows, most notably mirroring the cutting-edge work done at the NWS Storm Prediction Center (SPC) in Norman, OK. WSV3 must strive to be a tool offering a multitude of simultaneously displayable data able to be correlated with different windows, views, and presets to support the professional mesoanalyst use case.

Datasets must be presented according to standards of scientific rigor and documentation. Timestamps, units, and usage of precise language over user-friendly language is paramount. The desire to simplify is a user-interface goal and need not compromise the academic and scientific discipline of WSV3's base data display.

3. TV/Media/Web Broadcast

TV Broadcasting/Media usage of WSV3 is the second professional-use category not because it is any less important, but because it hierarchically proceeds from the latter. Television viewers understand their local meteorologist is not just a TV personality but an educated scientist possessing a college degree that required abundant scientific and even mathematical understanding. Television viewers understand their meteorologist is a scientist who can then simplify the story as a journalist, to communicate the key-points in useful terms that impact people's daily decision making or basic safety during disasters and storm emergencies.

If the product fails in its tactical mesoanalytic purpose for broadcast meteorologists in their own forecasting/analysis work, it will also fail in its ability to be used by said meteorologist to tell a simplified story with polished visuals, automated show presets, and stunning 3D graphics.

Having justified the tertiary order of this use-case, it hardly bears repeating that this newly introduces a legitimate business need for crisp, beautiful, fluid, and performant hardware-accelerated 3D graphics. The tactical purpose of the broadcast meteorologist to inform viewers of atmospheric reality depends on their viewership and their perception of said station's usage of superior, modern tools. While the vision for WSV3 2025 is one in which data trumps graphics, this dichotomy only exists in a theoretical vacuum. WSV3 2025 at its core embraces the concomitant pursuit of quality scientific data display and beautiful, aesthetic graphics.

The broadcast use case puts additional major focus on the simplicity and power of the user interface, even more than the previous two. While tactical usage could easily use one preset map configuration, and meteorological workstation users might have an established workflow, the feedback I've received from broadcast industry indicates a highly variable usage with rapidity of access and ease of automation as absolute necessities in operational usage.

Precisely this additional set of necessities for a logical, stream-lined, non-intrusive, hierarchically organized user interface imposed by the broadcast usage case results in WSV3 2025's necessary abandonment of the old 2015 user interface idea, with virtually all product status states shoved into a non-resizable top bar, detailed settings shuttled-off into map-overlapping windows, and a logically unclear separation between "data product state" and "data product settings".

This use case requires the implementation of all data as reproducible state machines, where every adjustable aspect inherits from scalable, versatile configuration files able to be logically arranged in structures like action-frames or timed action-sets, and must be fully separate from user interface events.

4. Aesthetic Cartography

WSV3 to this day supports a diverse online community of content creators, weather bloggers, storm chasers, hobbyist, enthusiasts, and professional meteorologists who need a personal-use casual display tool. WSV3 is already best know for its marked visual customizability and focus on end-user customization of all graphical aspects for unique "look and feel". All rendering engines must be rewritten for an even further polished emphasis on aesthetic cartography.

Usage of WSV3 2025 by the aesthetic meteorological cartographer constitutes the fourth use case only because it lacks quite the same rigor and industrial necessity of the previous three where lives are more likely on the line. This is still the hallmark of WSV3 first-generation's niche area of success, one not be to abandoned, but honored, cultivated, and maximized.