WeatherSTAR Emulator Forum
 | |
 WXEF as it appeared on November 7, 2021. | |
Type of site |
|
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Country of origin | United States |
| URL | weatherstar |
| Registration | Required to post on forums |
| Users | 196a |
| Launched | November 2009 |
| Current status | Inactive since 2014 |
| |
The WeatherSTAR Emulator Forum, abbreviated as WXEF, was an Internet forum aimed at The Weather Channel fandom that was created as a platform for hosting Weather Star simulators (often contemporaneously referred to as emulators). The forum was created through the free forum creation service Forumotion. It most notably hosted a simulator of the initial version of the Weather Star XL version of Weatherscan. The site has been inactive since September 30, 2014.
Despite the inactivity, the forum is still online. Posts created by spambots are a common sight, however, and users exploring the site should use an ad blocker.
History
The WeatherSTAR Emulator Forum was created sometime around mid-November 2009. It was advertised on TWCToday, bringing some users from that forum to the newly established site in search of new simulator projects. Over time, new threads were created for each STAR model, from the WeatherSTAR I to the IntelliStar. Many of these threads simply stated that a simulator project had not been started or was in the early stages of development. However, the following threads directly or indirectly had associated simulator projects:
- WeatherSTAR 3000: linked to an external project site
- WeatherSTAR 4000: linked to the Taiganet simulator site
- Weatherscan XL: directly hosted; see next section
- IntelliStar: linked to an external project site
On September 30, 2014, site owner BOLT96 released a forum post that announced that all projects pertaining to the forum would be closed.[1]
Weatherscan XL v1 simulator
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During the life of the forum, the only simulator project directly hosted on the site was a Weatherscan Local simulator created by BOLT96, the forum owner. The simulator simulated the graphic appearance of the earliest version of Weatherscan Local. The simulator was released to registered forum users in public beta on September 8, 2010. In order to use the program, one needed to obtain a program key through a direct message. The simulator was a Windows-only program that ran as an EXE file. The simulator relied on the Yahoo Weather API for data, which was retired beginning in 2019. Some products had become non-functional by 2014 due to changes in the API.[1]
Notably, the simulator was advanced for its time in that users with animated icons in AVI format could use them with the simulator. Download links for the simulator have been unusable for years, and since the retirement of the Yahoo Weather API, the program is nonfunctional data-wise. The program is not lost, however, since some original users still have archived copies. At the time when the forum's projects were closed, BOLT96 suggested the possibility of releasing the program's source code so it could continue development; however, no developments came of this.[1]
See also
Other community forums
- TWC Today
- TWC Classics (former forum, active community site)
- Taiganet
- We Love Weather (former forum, official community site)