Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

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English map that comes with AmiAtlas only
contains the road and towns data. Compared
to the accompanying German map this is fairly
sparse, as the German map has full details on
hotels you can stay at Just ask to view the
hotels and a bunch of little bed symbols will
appear on the German map. Click on one of
them and you get a full run down on that
hotel, including the full address, phone and fax
numbers, how much rooms are, what you get
in the rooms, what other types of functions
they do, and what credit cards they take -
pretty extensive I would say. The same goes
for amusement parks, with AmiAtlas giving
you information about how much it is to get in
and what rides and attractions each park has.
If you wanted, it is possible to enter new
towns and roads, so it new road routes do
appear you can update the AmiAtlas map. This
process is fairly painless. To add a new town
you just have to dick on the map where the
new town should be placed. You then, using
the pop up gadget, select which country and
county the town should be placed in, along
with which roads should run into it The same
process is used to add new roads - you can
just pick the start and destination towns, along
with what the road should be called and
how long it is. The new road is then
added to the map database,
and will be used in any
future route calculations.
The main use of
AmiAtlas is to help you
work out the best route
to take for a certain
Loading multiple ma ps
I. no proble m for ArniAlla s
'7he main use of AmiAtias is
to help you work out the be
route to take for a certain •
journey. AmiAtlas can work
out the fastest, shortest or
most pleasant way for you
to go"
At
Germany plus
France
Austria
Denmark
11-
picked this option, or you can just enter the
town names straight into the string gadgets.
A good feature here is that you can enter
the start of the town name. Press return and a
Jargon
b o
list of close matching town names pops up,
allowing you to quickly select one of them.
AmiAtlas also stores previously used names in
xan extension available
since Workbench 2.1
that allows any program supposting
Locale to work
the pop up gadgets, again allowing you to potentiolly any language
quickly select a regularly used town. You can
also add stop off points to your route, in the
same manner, allowing you to go via other
towns_
part of the
locale language system. For a
progrom to work in French it
needs all the English text thor
is used m it to be translated
Trip calculation is very quick - even
and stored a French lan-
fairly complicated ones are
completed in seconds_ You
guage catalogue
someone finally
realised that it might be a
then get a breakdown of good idea ro make installing
the route with all the pmgrams onto hard drive a
various road changes,
how long it takes, how
little easier los the uses, so
the Mstalles program was
written
much petrol you use, • a term taken from the
and you can view it on operarong system /Vest:Step
j
used on a computer called
oAmiAtlas
can work out I t u - J
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u
Next W dock is a group of
r„the
fastest, shortest or
ob "met. so
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tested it with long icons that gives you a short
• gado.
emost
pleasant way for
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y
" = = routes down south cut to othes functions
. you to go. It can also calcu-
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' which a couple of people
n late how far and how long it d
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i n theofficeregularlytake,
ois,
how much petrol you would t h e chosen route was pretty
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nuse
and therefore how much the trip ..
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t
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would cost you.• Orpco route has been planned
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the fastest route. Coini
s 4 The petrol and time you can view it on tha map And see cidently, the petrol con-
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amounts are calculated from all the necessary change points 1 sumption and pricing was
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•mvalues
that u you c give
1 also about right_
h
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•w
AmiAtlas.
h
Therefore,
a
depending
t
on what car The ▪ only real discrepancy was the amount
•you
have you can change the Kmiltr value. of time , the trip would take. The time calcula-
• t h e y
•You
also need to set up the correct speed limted by tAmiAtlas
would normally only be
•
•cits
for motorways o n and s dual i carriageways d - or around h2/3
of what the trip would actually
•
• eeuro roads r as eAmiAtlas d refers to them. This is take. For
l
e instance, it reckoned it should take
etmade
a little trickier o as the speeds are all in me 20
•
mminutes
to get to work. Even with good
% bkilometres.
traffic this
•
a
figure should be more like 35min-
•e
When it comes to setting a route, there are utes, but otherwise the planned route was
•
p
• two ways to enter it. Either dick on the start perfect
A
O and finish location, which means that both the As it . is possible to load more than one map
U
lstart
and finish towns have to be in sight as into AmiAllas, W you can have both the German
t
tyou
cannot scroll around once you have h
o
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r
A a
n VAILABLE MAPS
t
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w
.
d
a
Currently, e eleven other maps other than the standard German map
are available, these are:
Italy
Belgium
United Kingdom
and Ireland
Poland
Hungary
Czechoslovakia
A Spanish map is being worked on and a single European wide map
is also being considered. All these extra maps are 300M, apart from
the extended German map which is 45DM,
AMIGA COMPUTING
FEBRUARY 1 996
and UK maps visible along with any others you
may add. Unfortunately, you cannot plan routes
from the UK to Germany as there is no French
map to fill the gaps in between, and the
absence of any fern/ routes or a channel tunnel
route would also make it a little difficult It
would be interesting to see if this would be
possible if you did have the French map, and
such things like ferry routes were taken into
account
The main problems with AmiAtlas all come
about because it is a German product if you
were German you would not have any complaints
with the program. but English people
are generally different and can be a little picky
about things. It is a little annoying that you have
to tell it that you are working in English, and
that you also need to state that you want
money to be worked out in pounds. Fair
enough - there are at, least, options to allow
you to change the currency and language, but it
would be nice if it could do this automatically.
ARD TO
FAULT
Any criticisms I have managed to dig up
here are really very minor - things like the
kilometre measurement are a little annoying,
but they do not change the fact that
the program is very useful. If you ignore
these slight niggles, AmiAtlas is nearly
flawless. If the programmer could remove
the leftover foreign words and allow miles
instead of Kilometres I would not be able
to fault it in any way. Currently, the only
other major problem is that the on-line
help has not been translated, but AmiAtias
is so easy to use you do not need it
REQUIREMENTS
RED , %seirtiai I I I ACK .'i,rj
iJ
RAM
(
"
I
c
e
s
'
s
,
Ease of use
Implementation
Value For Money
Overall
Bottom
line
3Mb hard
disk spoor- ,
v
020 ,-,
-
kbench
6 Mb
Product A m i A t l a s
Developer Andreas, RegulSteinweg,
661462, KOnigstein, Germany
Registration 50DM AmiAtlas Pro
30DM Uk/Other map
20DM Postage
SCORES
94%
7.1b
819%
2,5