Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

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1
science fiction in an area which is already
1
overpopulated with the same Star Trek and
1
Babylon 5 pictures, this collection is more like
1
a general image bank.
1
All the standard tare is included, but
1
fortunately there are many other fields to
•
choose from, Pictures of supermodels and
1
swimsuits do. however, crop up all over the
6
place, but at least there's some fair play
thanks
,
to the inclusion of a number of musclebound
_
hunks as well.
Cars, trains, space, planes - as you'd
expect, there's an abundance of material to
keep the most avaricious anorak happy. But
there's also a great deal of useful material
too. Sunsets, world locations and landscapes
are available in huge quantities and often the
quality of the photography is high. Similarly.
dose-ups of roses and flowers could be put to
a number of different uses
PROS AND CONS
There are numerous painted backgrounds
available, while photographs of stones, bricks
and other textures are there for 3D tans to
wrap onto their objects. Considering the size
of the collection, LightWave and Imagine
users may be disappointed to find it lacks any
actual models; in my view, however, the collection
benefits by concentrating on being a
definitive 2D image bank.
Flags, famous album covers, military
multimedia enriffloodedia —
equipment, ray-traced - the list goes on and
on, and only occasionally does the quality
drop to below average. Fans of fantasy artist
Boris Vallejo will be pleased to see a huge
amount of his arguably pornographic but certainly
talented paintings covenng a sizeable
section of the first CD,
One further complaint does need raising
however, that being the amount of image
duplication in the collection. In fact, the Vallejo
collection is a good case in point, with the
same pictures cropping up three or four times
in close proximity.
The images are generally in IFF format In
addition to all the pictures. Viewtek has been
included so that everything required to look at
the images is included with the package. The
inclusion of Personal Paint is also welcome,
since users will be able to load up images and
work on them.
It's a shame, then, that it's an untranslated
German version. making it difficult to use for
the majority of us. The slapdash way in which
some things are thrown onto some CD collections
- and this is not an unusual example -
does not bode well for the Amiga's future CD
market.
So overall, Giga Graphics is not short of
flaws. Anyone who can find uses for a wide
range of imagery. however, cannot help but be
impressed by the value for money such a
huge and far reaching collection offers. In
short, it's should make a worthwhile buy.
The bottom line
Product: Giga Graphics
Price: 02.99
Supplier: Active Software
Tel: 0117 9741462
Ease of use 8
Implementation
Value for money 9
Overall 8
The appeal of having
an entire encyclopaedia
stored on a Single
compact disc is obvious,
so it's no surprise
that many suppliers
are selling out
of the Grolier CD
reviewed a few
months back In its
the Hutchinson
Encgclopaedia
place, the equally old
Hutchinson electronic encyclopaedia has resurfaced, so
we decided to see how well it's stood the test of lime.
Though it was originally designed for use with the
curv, most new purchasers are likely to be using emulation
software on their Al200s, so it's good that Epic have
included alternative keyboard controls. Untortunately,
however, this is not enough to overcome every compatibility
problem. For example, though the instructions stressed
that it was essential to boot from the disc, this proved to
be impossible using our Squirrel. We did manage to run it
from workbench, but the text appeared in such a small
font it was difficult to read - on the CD32 the articles are
much more readable.
There are also problems using the encyclopaedia
because the Al 200 lacks a control pad, and navigating
the interlace requires combinations of Amiga keys, ALT
keys and the cursor arrows. Sometimes users can get
stuck in one article and it's not at all clear how to get back
to the main menu.
Basically, this makes it impossible to recommend for
Squirrel users, but it does seem to work perfectly well on
the 0032. With over 25.000 entries plus pictures and
soundclips, for those who own the console the Hutchinson
CD still sounds like a worthwhile product.
In comparison to the Electronic Grolier, however, The
Hutchinson doesn't seem to work so-well. The first problem
is the peculiarly flickery screen which makes using the
disc painful on the eye.
Though there are 2000 photographs and 250 sound
clips, they are sparsely distributed among all the plain text
articles. Considering this is supposed to be a multimedia
product, the information is often blandly presented to the
point where most people would rather use the traditional
paper version.
With searching tools that also seem inferior to the
Grolier, this CD unfortunately doesn't cut it in the modem
multimedia age. Its only its price, plus the fact that the
Grolier is hard to get, that makes it even worth considering
these days.
Am ga Computing
n r i
The bottom line
Product: Hutchinson
Encyclopaedia CD
Price: £14.99
Supplier.' Epic Software
Tel: 01793 490988
Ease of use
Implementation 5
Value for money
Overall 6
SOFTWARE