SimSat v0.2.1 - improved low-sun terrain, CIMSS IR, and GPU parity

SimSat v0.2.1

This release improves terrain illumination, especially around twilight, while preserving the reviewed cloud appearance. It also makes CIMSS Style the recommended Band-13 presentation.

Highlights

• Corrected surface sunlight normalization. Removed an unintended second limb-darkening factor from land, water, and glint illumination, bringing surface and cloud solar energy onto the same basis.
• Better low-sun terrain. The reviewed, tightly gated terrain recovery is enabled for finished visible products from civil twilight through low sun, then returns to exact identity by +12 degrees solar elevation.
• Slightly brighter reviewed terrain default. Recommended Display and High Quality Visible now use a restrained, surface-only ground_gain=1.10; 1.0 remains the neutral override. Cloud radiance is not scaled by this control.
• CPU/GPU visual parity. GPU rendering now supports the same post-light terrain controls as CPU rendering instead of disabling them during preview.
• CIMSS Style is now Recommended for Band 13. Fresh Studio settings, IR product transitions, the Recommended preset, and the headless IR CLI select CIMSS. Natural grayscale and the other analysis palettes remain available.
• Consistent controls everywhere. Twilight recovery can be enabled, disabled, and tuned in Studio, the CLI, Python, and the Rust API. Existing saved settings are preserved through Studio's normal migration choice.
• Science data remains unchanged. IR palettes do not alter raw Kelvin values. Raw RGB reflectance, Sensor QA, thermal/derived products, and cloud-only layers retain neutral surface-display behavior.

Validation

• Owner-reviewed with the 1974 low-sun case and broader visible cases using the exact Windows executable below.
• Engine: 568 passed, 2 ignored.
• Studio: 65/65 passed.
• Public CI passed Linux formatting, strict Clippy, full tests, Windows/macOS engine builds, and an installed-wheel generated-render smoke.
• The release-artifact build passed all three Windows Studio, Linux CLI, and manylinux wheel jobs. The exact downloaded wheel rendered a generated 12 x 12 Band-13 scene in WSL; both Linux binaries passed --help, and the tar entries are executable mode 755.
• Windows FileVersion/ProductVersion: 0.2.1.

Downloads

• simsat-studio-v0.2.1-windows-x86_64.exe — self-contained Windows Studio
  SHA-256: 12FF5C491A7CD4360E5CAFAA88DE34733F8FC4AC13C73E3B5606335776E6117F
• simsat-0.2.1-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl
  SHA-256: D0E1EEAC793C335D174F06D159271B1A642C485798A87843B1358F57A1A00069
• simsat-cli-v0.2.1-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
  SHA-256: E73C543288C54A5DCE729FA7C596AD6BC43ECA97CDE8BDAE602FA5681357B582
• THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt
  SHA-256: E235FA33875603FE529DED887E6FD2CF4C595B7F486CE57567E3E4CED6C6C036

The Windows executable is unsigned, so Microsoft Defender SmartScreen may show an unknown-publisher warning.

SimSat v0.2.0 - natural IR, two-subcolumn clouds, and cleaner top-down lighting

SimSat v0.2.0

This release focuses on more natural infrared presentation, better low-sun terrain, faster reviewed cloud closure, and cleaner top-down shadows.

Highlights

• Natural IR is now Recommended. Band 13 defaults to NOAA's continuous heritage grayscale, avoiding the solid red blobs and isotherm rings created by the former default false-color curve. The underlying floating-point Kelvin field is unchanged.
• Legacy IR analysis palettes remain available. CIMSS, BD, AVN, Funktop, Rainbow, and legacy linear grayscale are still selectable in Studio, the CLI, and Python.
• Recommended clouds use deterministic two-subcolumn closure. This keeps more wispy/fractional structure than effective-OD while being much faster than the higher-member convergence references. Effective-OD and deterministic 4/8/16 remain explicit choices. Deterministic-2 can roughly double the cloud-march portion of CPU render time versus effective-OD.
• Improved low-sun visible terrain. The bounded land solar-zenith recovery has a more useful gain range, with exact per-pixel solar-elevation diagnostics and temporal QA.
• Cleaner top-down lighting. Cloud-front atmosphere is restored and top-down ground cloud shadows receive a display-only antialiasing pass; geostationary and raw reflectance products are not filtered.
• Optional surface experiment. The post-light terrain toe is exposed across Rust, CLI, Python, and Studio, but remains default-off.
• Consistent controls. Natural IR, the legacy palettes, cloud closure, shadow antialiasing, and the reviewed settings are available through the supported interfaces.

Validation

• Owner-tested Windows RC2, including live IR re-enhancement and IR/WV Recommended transitions.
• HRRR and NSSL top-down/geostationary cross-case checks; Natural versus legacy enhancement produced byte-identical raw Kelvin fields.
• Public CI: https://github.com/FahrenheitResearch/simsat/actions/runs/29215685042
• Release artifact build: https://github.com/FahrenheitResearch/simsat/actions/runs/29215402872
• Exact manylinux wheel installed and rendered a generated 12 x 12 Band-13 scene in WSL.
• Both Linux CLI binaries passed --help smoke tests; tar entries are executable mode 755.

Downloads

• simsat-studio-v0.2.0-windows-x86_64.exe
  SHA-256: 6509369B3C269B2DC2F74FE3E372290D0312178A2C80A9A521A4E3B74F0E8328
• simsat-0.2.0-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl
  SHA-256: 3C50CA103311555D7BFBCEDDFF4D1ACE20EC151A2AB75F819B915417DBCE7682
• simsat-cli-v0.2.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
  SHA-256: 2EC69FBC24BD962BE554C0B1137BE96C8E5322E65C17CDA480E077C77C3F5F9C
• THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt
  SHA-256: E235FA33875603FE529DED887E6FD2CF4C595B7F486CE57567E3E4CED6C6C036

Windows note

The Windows executable is a self-contained static-CRT build. It is currently unsigned, so Microsoft Defender SmartScreen may show an unknown-publisher warning.

SimSat v0.1.9 - reviewed low-sun lighting, reproducible modes, and sensor QA

SimSat v0.1.9 — reviewed low-sun lighting, reproducible modes, and sensor QA

v0.1.9 is the first public release since v0.1.6. It includes the v0.1.7 and v0.1.8 development work, which was previously available only in local test builds.

Highlights

• Corrected visible lighting near sunrise and sunset:

  • Land assistance now ramps smoothly from 0–12° solar elevation.
  • Water keeps physically valid direct sunlight at low sun.
  • The reviewed cloud-shadow diffuse floor is now 0.45.
  • Standalone cloud layers remain neutral at night instead of darkening host basemaps.
  • Finite-sun cloud penumbra now uses the Sun’s angular radius.

• Added three transparent, one-click Studio modes:

  • Recommended Display
  • High Quality Visible
  • Sensor QA

  Presets show their exact changes, save immediately, and leave every underlying setting editable.

• Added explicit Display and Sensor Fast Gray render intents with machine-readable provenance. Sensor Fast Gray is an intentionally limited QA operator—not a claim of complete ABI/AHI sensor equivalence.

• Expanded observation and physics QA:

  • Official GOES-R ABI ellipsoid/fixed-grid navigation
  • Official GOES-19 ABI Band 13 FM4 spectral-response integration
  • Exact-grid visible and raw-Kelvin GOES validation tools
  • Deterministic 4/8/16 fractional-cloud subcolumn references
  • Opt-in native-moment cloud optics
  • Experimental ScienceCloudF16 storage and ABI Band 13 footprint paths

• SSB cache format is now v6. Older source-backed caches rebuild once and preserve available HRRR/RRFS SNMR snow identity.

Stable reviewed defaults

This release deliberately does not add another global gamma transform. The reviewed visible defaults remain:

• Exposure: 1.5
• Aerosol optical depth: 0.05
• Cloud optical-depth scale: 0.15
• Ground gain: 1.0
• Cloud highlight knee: 0.65
• Cloud highlight ceiling: 1.25

High Quality Visible retains that baseline while selecting deterministic-4 cloud geometry and a 0.45 highlight knee. All values remain independently adjustable through the Studio, CLI, Python, and Rust interfaces.

Downloads

• simsat-studio-v0.1.9-windows-x86_64.exe — self-contained Windows desktop app with static CRT; no Visual C++ redistributable is required.
• simsat-0.1.9-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl — Python wheel for CPython 3.8 or newer on compatible x86-64 Linux systems.
• simsat-cli-v0.1.9-linux-x86_64.tar.gz — Linux command-line tools:
  • simsat-render-frame
  • simsat-render-ir
• THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt — dependency licenses, attributions, and NOAA ABI SRF provenance.

The Windows executable is currently unsigned, so Microsoft SmartScreen may show an “unknown publisher” warning. Verify its SHA-256 value below before running it.

Validation

The release commit passed the public Rust/Python CI suite and the manually dispatched cross-platform artifact build:

• Public CI
• Release artifact build

The shipped Windows executable is the exact locally built, owner-tested static binary. Release validation also covers Python wheel import/generated-scene rendering and Linux CLI startup.

The selected lighting behavior was reviewed across seven lighting anchors and an 11-image sweep spanning ten distinct WRF/HRRR runs, including Hurricane Michael in geostationary and top-down views.

SHA-256

2411F6BF0B5CE498D6CF59A95242188A93F6F0D31725AA3BD6D9BBF58B3C30F5  simsat-studio-v0.1.9-windows-x86_64.exe
10CEA8E0892C1A1DDCB41E697EDF3ECF6169E41708E97B1D7652B4DDED3D5064  simsat-0.1.9-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl
4E1795A0BF80814211BBE7C6664EC14977A07288AA3E5F00C9688381B572AB57  simsat-cli-v0.1.9-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
E235FA33875603FE529DED887E6FD2CF4C595B7F486CE57567E3E4CED6C6C036  THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt

SimSat v0.1.6 - faster GPU preview and improved top-down clouds

Highlights

• Adds a one-click GPU Render action in SimSat Studio. Rust, the CLI, and
  Python now expose the same explicit gpu-preview backend, and every temporary
  compatibility substitution is reported rather than silently ignored.
• Adds real GPU cloud rendering for top-down views.
• Top-down output now honors Model native, ABI 1 km, and ABI 2 km
  resolution while preserving the model domain's physical aspect ratio at the
  output-size cap. Model native means one pixel per source-grid cell.
• Adds an opt-in, default-off top-down stratiform reconstruction control for
  source-grid ring artifacts in affected HRRR cloud fields. It is available in
  Studio, the CLI, Python, and Rust; geostationary and raw-band rendering remain
  unchanged.
• Adds opt-in bounded delta-flux cloud-transport modes, including the
  brightness-neutral delta-flux-v2b experiment.
• Windows executables now carry correct embedded FileVersion/ProductVersion
  metadata (0.1.6).

The v0.1.5 visible calibration remains in place: exposure 1.5, cloud optical
depth scale 0.15, brighter terrain presentation, and finite-domain cloud-edge
feathering.

Validation

• Public Linux CI passed: fmt, strict clippy, and the full workspace test suite.
• Release-artifact builds passed on Windows and Linux.
• The published Windows executable is the exact locally tested static-CRT RC.
• The manylinux wheel passed a clean WSL import/version smoke.
• Both packaged Linux CLI binaries retained mode 0755 and passed --help.

Build records: CI and release artifacts.

SHA-256

57282CDFE177224FB6EB3D2CE30AAF02BEDD4C3925DE7809B060F8CAB92245F9  simsat-0.1.6-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl
4AACDD56FFEDB3D46B9818857F977421A0C72A7392C00EEEE264B935BD388E4B  simsat-cli-v0.1.6-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
56D9C18AD30BC0743C13F7E75A269036D457A7F631CD21094814A862003DBAB3  simsat-studio-v0.1.6-windows-x86_64.exe
66B16FC0C7353CB519114C2B2C338FF32CFD1B2CF41431ECA62EC5FDBB5319FF  THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt

The Windows executable is currently unsigned, so Microsoft Defender
SmartScreen may show an Unknown publisher warning. Verify the SHA-256 above
before running it.

SimSat v0.1.5 - brighter land and natural domain-edge clouds

SimSat v0.1.5 improves visible-satellite land brightness and makes clouds fade naturally at exposed finite-domain boundaries across WRF and HRRR inputs.

Highlights:

• A reviewed visible default exposure of 1.5, replacing the systematically dark surface presentation while retaining explicit overrides.
• Surface solar-zenith normalization and a bounded dark-land toe are enabled by default, improving low-sun land visibility without lifting ocean or cloud radiance.
• Exposed-domain cloud-edge feathering is enabled by default, replacing hard rectangular cloud cutoffs with a controlled fade only where the camera can see beyond the finite model domain.
• Matching controls in the Rust API, headless CLI, Python binding, and SimSat Studio. Every new appearance operator can be disabled to recover the legacy path.
• CPU and GPU implementations of the new land operators are parity-tested. Studio preserves existing saved calibrations and offers the v0.1.5 preset explicitly.
• Faster preparation for surface-only/cloud-disabled renders plus a parallel multi-case QA runner for cross-file calibration.

The higher-order delta-flux cloud-transport experiment shown in the local QA matrix is intentionally not part of this release; it remains an opt-in v0.1.6 candidate pending broader case review.

The Windows executable is unsigned because the project signing certificate has expired. If Microsoft Defender SmartScreen appears, choose More info, then Run anyway, and verify the SHA-256 checksum before launching.

SHA-256 checksums:

• simsat-studio-v0.1.5-windows-x86_64.exe:
  CB6FE6343FAC5FF677782C5B068765F8EB4E9BFA6393BE56E568CCC6F8255253
• simsat-0.1.5-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl:
  7A3FAA13E1248F50887ACC9C0CB47348FA93FEF5773F7BA0D491ADE5B2064939
• simsat-cli-v0.1.5-linux-x86_64.tar.gz:
  0B310DEF0AA7CE71E6C32CFBFB63391BE31DBC3C4431F026F23315E003E1AB3A
• THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt:
  301F4041951145FCD822A9CECC1A29730ABC7710C081E39F0FD07D6CAF6D3419

SimSat v0.1.4 - model-aware fractional clouds and visible calibration

SimSat v0.1.4 improves visible-satellite cloud coverage, brightness calibration,
source diagnostics, and release reliability across WRF and HRRR inputs.

Highlights:

• Model-aware fractional-cloud coverage. WRF CLDFRA is preserved where valid and
  contradictory or missing coverage can be repaired with the Xu-Randall diagnostic.
  HRRR wrfnat uses its native 50-level cloud-fraction field. Maximum-overlap
  remapping lets modeled cloud margins fade instead of treating every condensate cell
  as horizontally full.
• A reviewed visible default profile: cloud optical-depth scale 0.15, neutral
  exposure and ground lift 1.0, highlight knee 0.65, and highlight ceiling
  1.25. The 0.15 value is a cross-case visual calibration; 1.0 remains unscaled
  model extinction, and every control remains overridable.
• Matching cloud, atmosphere, and display controls in the Rust API, headless CLI,
  Python binding, and SimSat Studio. Fractional clouds can be disabled explicitly to
  restore the conservative legacy full-cell behavior.
• Cloud higher-order lighting no longer reuses the coarse ground-shadow map as
  volumetric support. Ground shadows retain the coarse map while cloud lighting uses
  native column/depth information.
• Studio correctness fixes: Clouds Off now produces a genuinely surface-only
  geostationary render; Granulation cannot silently enter an incompatible experimental
  GPU path; restoring shipped display calibration now includes exposure.
• More useful source provenance, including a targeted warning for NSSL MP18 files whose
  moisture/scalar advection configuration can separate mass and number fields at cloud
  edges.
• Faster ingestion and cache reads. Field reuse reduces repeated WRF reads, and streamed
  SSB decoding lowers warm-cache time and peak memory without changing decoded values.

Upgrade note:

SSB cache format v5 carries the corrected cloud-fraction semantics. Source-backed
v0.1.3/v4 caches re-ingest once. A cached-only run needs its original WRF/GRIB source
file to upgrade.

The Windows executable is unsigned because the project signing certificate has
expired. If Microsoft Defender SmartScreen appears, choose More info, then
Run anyway, and verify the SHA-256 checksum before launching.

SHA-256 checksums:

• simsat-studio-v0.1.4-windows-x86_64.exe:
  CD0DDA4F3D9965E8BB71CD49A492B194B21F7CCB2A35A205517C3BD4A7EF7E73
• simsat-0.1.4-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl:
  99AAAE1C0ACC28F98B64614AF1ED375F6F7928D710E1B0D17B04CA4912A57BE8
• simsat-cli-v0.1.4-linux-x86_64.tar.gz:
  74DE457D5FCC2CA95AD04AD50236597A68E1CAC078E1C0C5E93AFFDE9F1E48EA
• THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt:
  301F4041951145FCD822A9CECC1A29730ABC7710C081E39F0FD07D6CAF6D3419

SimSat v0.1.3 - atmosphere and cloud fidelity controls

SimSat v0.1.3 improves daytime visible-image fidelity and makes the atmosphere/cloud model easier to tune across every supported interface.

Highlights:

• Terrain-aware atmospheric paths and a more consistent aerial veil for surfaces and cloud fronts.
• Daytime aerial-veil correction for clearer low-AOD scenes, plus relative-humidity aerosol coupling.
• A thin-limit cloud multiscatter correction and a visible cloud optical-depth scale for controlled sensitivity testing.
• Matching controls in SimSat Studio, the command-line tools, and Python for AOD, RH coupling, daytime correction, terrain-height atmosphere, cloud rendering, cloud multiscatter, Beer-powder shaping, granulation, and visible cloud optical-depth scale.
• Cloud-disabled renders now remain consistent through preparation, rendering, and Studio status reporting.

At the neutral cloud scale of 1.0, source-model cloud optical depth is preserved. Thick HRRR cloud decks can therefore remain genuinely optically thick; lowering the scale is an explicit visualization/sensitivity adjustment. Raw derived COD and infrared products are unchanged by the visible-only scale.

Terrain-height atmosphere currently uses the CPU rendering path because the GPU preview does not yet carry the required terrain-height texture.

The Windows executable is unsigned because the project signing certificate has expired. If Microsoft Defender SmartScreen appears, choose More info, then Run anyway, and verify the published SHA-256 checksum before launching.

SHA-256 checksums:

• simsat-studio-v0.1.3-windows-x86_64.exe: 5BF4AFBF59B1954D1F63A14C5A32A0AAB23B85EE06F52AEAB5815883FDA49BBE
• simsat-0.1.3-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl: 69AD811FE625C13685BD136B31F82F5185C87CFAB035EE38D65548F3AED2C4F0
• simsat-cli-v0.1.3-linux-x86_64.tar.gz: 604BF625311F5377B67CD533FEF3DE19C3A9F4B5935C5D0B7407ABD817CDC0C8
• THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt: 301F4041951145FCD822A9CECC1A29730ABC7710C081E39F0FD07D6CAF6D3419

SimSat v0.1.2 - operational models (HRRR/RRFS) + perspective camera

Operational models and new cameras: SimSat now ingests live NOAA model output, and every product can be shot from any angle.

New

• HRRR ingest (GRIB2): open a NOAA HRRR native-level file (hrrr.tHHz.wrfnatfXX.grib2) directly in the studio, CLI, or Python binding - exactly like a wrfout. The full 1799x1059x50 CONUS file streams into the brick in ~25 s within the same memory budget. RRFS (rrfs.tHHz.natlev.3km.fXXX.na.grib2, rotated lat-lon) ingests via the CLI with a regional crop (crop=lat1,lat2,lon1,lon2); a crop UI and a CONUS default are queued.
• Free perspective camera: arbitrary eye/look/FOV through the same physics - angled 3-D storm shots with real parallax cloud shadows. Interactive in the studio (View: Perspective (3-D), orbit controls: azimuth/tilt/range/FOV), eye=/look=/fov=/camsize= in simsat-render-frame, render_perspective(...) in Python.
• Web map layers: render_frame product=cloud-layer / render_cloud_layer(...) renders the cloud field as a transparent EPSG:3857 overlay (straight-alpha clouds + a separate multiply shadow layer) for compositing over Mapbox-class basemaps.
• GPU cloud renderer (experimental, opt-in): a wgpu port of the volumetric cloud pass for fast interactive preview, default OFF. Stored frames, sequences, and batch renders always use the tested CPU path. An in-app "GPU parity check" renders both paths and reports per-channel deltas with a heatmap.

Fixed

• The Open dialog defaults to All files again (an extension filter was hiding extension-less wrfout files).
• Disabled controls now say why they are disabled (e.g. the GPU cluster names its required mode/view/clouds state).

Upgrade

• Python: pip install -U the v0.1.2 wheel.
• Windows: replace the exe. Existing caches are unaffected.
• The exe is unsigned: SmartScreen will prompt - "More info" > "Run anyway".

SimSat Studio v0.1.1

The first-user feedback release: everything reported by the first meteorologist running SimSat inside his WRF plotting pipeline, fixed within a day.

Fixed

• Anvils and stratiform shields no longer render 3-4x too optically thick. WRF's snow category (QSNOW - the dominant frozen species aloft in most storms) was lit with small-crystal cloud-ice optics; every hydrometeor species now carries its own particle size. Downwind anvil sheets are properly translucent, convective cores unchanged, and IR presentations improve dramatically (hurricane eyes and spiral banding resolve instead of a flat cold blob).
• Sunrise/low-sun visible no longer renders sepia/khaki. The cause was a green deficit in the grazing direct beam; a transmittance-derived illuminant correction restores it, gated to leave twilight and full daytime byte-identical. An optional ABI-style synthetic-green display mode (synthetic-green) is included.
• The Python binding is silent by default. simsat.set_verbose(True) or SIMSAT_LOG=1 restores the ingest/progress lines (unchanged text, stderr). CLI and desktop logging unchanged.
• Old caches self-heal. The brick format bumped to v3 (the snow-optics fix changes brick content); opening a wrfout with an older cache now re-ingests automatically instead of erroring.

New (opt-in)

• Sub-grid cloud granulation: coarse-grid (2-3 km) boundary-layer cumulus can be broken into granular fields instead of solid blocky cutouts (Worley-based subtract-only erosion, scaled by the model's effective resolution, never applied to quantitative IR/WV/derived products). Off by default in this release - enable with the studio's Clouds-group toggle or granulation=True in the binding - while the texture model is refined.

Upgrade

• Python: pip install -U <the v0.1.1 wheel> (new version number, upgrades cleanly).
• Windows: replace the exe. First open of each previously-cached file re-ingests once (brick v3).
• The exe is unsigned: SmartScreen will prompt - "More info" > "Run anyway".

SimSat Studio v0.1.0

Physically-based simulated satellite imagery from WRF model output.

Open a wrfout file and render what a geostationary satellite would see: visible true-color with volumetric multi-scatter clouds over a seasonal Blue Marble earth, synthetic IR band 13, water vapor bands 8/9/10, GeoColor day/night, the Sandwich convection composite, and derived scalar fields (precipitable water, cloud-top temperature, cloud optical depth) - in both a from-space geostationary view and a top-down map-registered view. See the README gallery for examples.

Downloads

• simsat-studio-v0.1.0-windows-x86_64.exe - the desktop studio for Windows 10/11. Single self-contained file (statically linked, no VC++ runtime needed). Unsigned: SmartScreen will show an "unrecognized app" prompt - choose "More info" > "Run anyway".
• simsat-0.1.0-cp38-abi3-manylinux*.whl - the Python binding for Linux (CPython 3.8+): pip install <wheel> then import simsat. Nine render functions returning numpy arrays + georeferencing; see crates/simsat_py/README.md.
• simsat-cli-v0.1.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz - headless CLI renderers (simsat-render-frame, simsat-render-ir) for batch/scripted rendering on servers. CPU-only, no GPU or display required.
• THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt - license notices for the statically linked dependencies.

Linux users can also build the studio GUI from source (cargo build --release -p simsat_studio).

Notes

• On first render the app downloads the month's Blue Marble ground texture (~24 MB, SHA-256 verified, mirrored on this repo's bluemarble-2km-v1 release with NASA as fallback); fully offline use falls back to an embedded 8 km composite.
• Clouds and weather exist only inside your WRF domain - the zoom-out margin shows the real surrounding earth under clear sky.
• Renders are CPU-only by design: roughly 1-4 s per 800x800 frame at full quality on a modern desktop.