Frequently Asked Questions
General
Unisphere creates a digital twin of your planned drone flight and thus determines the weather-related feasibility of the flight along the entire flight route, using high-resolution weather data.
Unisphere offers software as a service for drone flight planning based on weather data to make your drone flight safe and plannable.
There is currently no Unisphere app, however our applications are web-based and thus can also be used on mobile devices.
The parameters for your drone can be found in the drone’s data sheet. If you do not have this at hand, contact the manufacturer.
Product
The pilot must always check the weather conditions before take-off and decide for himself whether a flight is possible. Thus, the pilot is always responsible in the event of an accident, even if the weather forecast is positive.
You can include the following parameters in your mission:
- CAPE Index
- Cloud Base
- Cloud Ceiling
- Cloud Coverage high
- Cloud Coverage low
- Cloud Coverage medium
- Cloud Total Coverage
- Cross Wind (right)
- Dew Point
- Effective Cloud Cover
- Est. Runway Visual Range
- Gust Factor
- Head Wind
- Icing Potential
- KP-Index
- Lifted Index
- Rain Amount
- Rain Probability
- Relative Humidity
- Spread (OAT-DP)
- Temperature (OAT)
- Thunderstorm Probability
- Visibility
- Wind Gust
- Wind Speed
Currently, in NOVA cast the weather data are only available in UTC, whereas NOVA aware offers the possibility to change to local time zones.
Each user can create 5 missions per application.
With NOVA cast you receive an automatic evaluation of flight windows based on highly accurate weather data up to one week in advance for your drone flight planning. NOVA Aware creates Situational Awareness for operational conditions for the current and upcoming day by combining high-resolution weather models and weather observations incl. METAR/TAF.
We cannot guarantee that a drone flight will be possible at the times indicated in our weather forecast. The pilot must always check and decide on the flight conditions before taking off the flight.
Currently not, but it is planned to be integrated in the future.
Our focus lies on UAV flight planning, however the software can be used for any type of aircraft.
We offer a 30-day free trial period for both of our drone flight planning software NOVA cast and NOVA aware.
You can select as many parameters as you need from the list of possible parameters for your mission forecast.
Sufficient accurate weather data can be predicted up to a maximum of one week in advance.
With NOVA you can use the functions of NOVA cast and NOVA aware.
Weather
We use high-resolution weather models combined with an additional downscaling of the original grid size to achieve a further improvement in accuracy. The downscaling is performed by considering local weather variables (e.g., surface temperature and precipitation) and applying such relationships to the results of global weather models.
Our Weather forecasts are updated four times a day. This is the same Update rate as most of the large global weather models. In NOVA aware METARs and TAFs are checked every five minutes and directly updated if changes occur.
Our weather data is available on a global scale.
Our services provide weather information from ground to 20000 m (65 000 ft).
We use a mixed model approach, where proven weather models are applied depending on the location to gain the highest possible forecast accuracy. This enables high reliability. However, 100% reliability can not be guaranteed.
We achieve resolutions down to 90m. However, depending on the region and available weather model the resolution can vary.
Our weather model considers terrain contours on a larger scale such as mountains. Smaller elevations like buildings or vegetation are not considered.
NOVA cast only uses weather model data for the evaluation. NOVA aware additionally provides Observation data from METARs.
We do not use hyperlocal weather data, as these are not available everywhere and sufficiently.