Aviation Adventure
Reviewed by Ty Brewer
Published by Knowledge Adventure

Age Group: Age 8 and Up Type: More Fun Price: $10 US

Description:

Aviation Adventure, one of many titles from Knowledge Adventure, takes the category of Aviation and builds a multimedia reference and entertainment title suitable for children and adults. Let me start out by saying I was very eager to review this title. When I was very very young, my mother purchased a set of encyclopedias delivered once-a-month by mail. Well, I never learned where Brazil was, or what a Cable Car did, because I was stuck right in the middle of the "airplane" section of the letter "A." For years after that, I read and re-read that first volume, spending hours and hours imagining what it was like to fly airplanes. By the time I was in 2nd grade, I knew the difference between pitch and yaw, the meaning of "angle of attack" and the difference between and aileron and an elevator. Before I ever received this title, I was quite hopeful it would offer the same kind of magic and information that first encyclopedia did.

Set Flaps to 10

This title is a combination reference/interactive browsing/entertainment title. From the Home state, you can pick from the Theater, Aviation Lab, Paper Airplane Factory, Aviation Museum, Glider Game, and Aviation Trivia. This short list does not fully represent the sheer amount of information available within each area of the game. Anyone who has taken a tour of a NASA facility will be familiar with the navigation metaphor for this title.

Crash Test Dummies

The Theater shows movie snipets from the history of aviation - both military and civilian, including bloopers and crashes. The movies are more novelty than substance but provide plenty of value for an aviation enthusiast. I especially liked the military movies, as these are not items you see every day on TV. Just pick a category, then flip through the movies, click and watch. Not much interactivity here and really not a lot of content. Well, perhaps the next section would be more valuable.

Not Quite Jane's

The next stop is the Reference Library. Here, you are presented with a timeline and major categories in aviation - from Civilian to Military, from Aviation Pioneers to Stealth Technology. Click on a year or a category to get more information. For instance, a click on Milestones and you get a photo of the Wright Brother's first flight, complete with a short text explanation read by a female voice. Click on the year 500 B.C. for a snippet about Archimedes running naked through the streets after his discovery of displacement volume. How exactly does this relation to aviation, well, this is a useful explanation of how balloons fly. Hmmm. This sounds like a reach. I just couldn't understand why the timeline began so early. Even a click on 100 B.C. was just about the myths of people who could fly. This isn't aviation. Aviation is flying, not stories about people with 3 arms who "flew" 1800 years before the first manned balloon flight. This was just way too much of a reach.

Furthermore, even when a significant event was found, the video or picture was just way off base. For example, the first significant use helicopters in a military role is accompanied by a picture of a modern Blackhawk helicopter, not the 1950's Sikorsky S-55 the text describes. Missiles: 1955 shows an Apache helicopter. I don't know what they were smoking when they played the "word association game" that connected "missiles" with "helicopters." Sure, helicopters shoot missiles, but in 1955, fixed-wing airplanes shot missiles, not helicopters. It's almost as if they said "Hey, we've got this great shot a helicopter shooting missiles, lets somehow tie this in with that text we didn't have a photo for..."

Even if you have visited a topic before, finding it again can be a real challenge. Let's say you remember the movie of the missile-firing helicopter or the time-warping Blackhawk helicopter. With their screwy timeline, would that be under "Cold War" or even under "1600's: Aviation Milestones. OK, I'll be a little nicer. A glance through the index for "helicopter" shows up with military helicopters and but no reference to the missile-firing military helicopter. I did find the "missile-firing helicopter" under the topic "Hellfire missiles." Interesting, I found "Commercial Helicpters" under the topic "Hellicptors" - yes, evidently, they spell it differently for commercial vehicles.

Under the Microscope

Next stop: Aviation Lab. The lab looks like something out of the Smithsonian - a room full of airplanes. I was beginning to get excited.

Clicking on an airplane shows a close-up view of the plane. Surprisingly, you can click and zoom in tighter to reveal more details about the individual aircraft. I like the ability to pull back the skin of the plane to show the insides. While each airplane has one bit of knowledge you probably didn't know, there was not a lot of content. Just what about the landing gear of a MiG-25 was it I was supposed to be impressed with? Anyway, for the selected aircraft, the information was adequate, but not in-depth. I wish for one thing: more aircraft. I liked the information about the F-15, but what about the F-16 and F-18? Why two jet-liners? Why not some real historical aircraft?

Amusing: A Museum

The Museum takes you through a virtual museum. This area is common in Knowledge Adventure games. It always makes me feel like I'm playing Wolfenstein 3D again. The Museum has 6 areas: How Planes Fly, Pilot Careers, Non-Pilot Careers, Celebrity Pilots, Theater, and Resource Lobby. I enjoyed the How Planes Fly area. Click on an image and you get a brief explanation of such items as "flaps." If you want even more detail, you can print out lengthy articles on the subject. These articles explain in-depth the technology or science behind the topic. The articles are informative and well-written. I clicked on the picture "An F-15e shoots down a MiG-23" thinking "they really have this on tape?!?!?" Well, no. They don't. They have a couple of computer-generated airplanes fly around until the MiG is shot down. Not at all interesting, especially when you see the F-15 seem to disobey basic flight dynamics and turn on a dime. Just not very convincing. I especially loved the picture of the child actor who flies airplanes - PLEASE!!!

Smooth Sailing

By now, I'm ready for some entertainment. I decide to check out the "Glider" game. This is the same "Glider" game that was ever-so-popular with the Macintosh a few years ago. Fun game, I suppose, but I never enjoyed it as much as the editors at MacWeek did. I think they gave it a "Game of the Year" award or something back in 1992. Another gaming distraction is "F4U Secret Sortie." This is just the PC Shareware game "Corn Cob" repackaged. I never really liked this game either, and compared to today's flight simulators, it doesn't hold up. They would have done themselves a favor by leaving out this game. It is lacks the user interface of the rest of this title and just doesn't seem to fit with the package.

Know when to Fold 'em

When my parents would send me to Grandma's for a week, I built paper airplanes. That's it, just sat around and made paper airplanes. The CD includes a section on making and flying paper airplanes. You get 12 airplanes and brief but thorough discussions of four topics: camber, dihedral, control, and balance. A click on an airplane gives you easy to follow folding instructions. You can print out paper designs with fold marks already in place. I build a few of the airplanes and they all flew fairly well. I liked this section of the title the most. Fortunately, none of these planes require glue or esoteric materials. Just a sheet of paper.

Childhood Lost

No, this doesn't bring back the awe and wonder of aviation I experienced as a child. Knowledge Adventure has assembled a decent piece of work, but it just doesn't really come through with the goods. I really wanted to like this title. Aviation Adventure may be suitable for youngsters who already have a keen interest in aviation, but its lack of depth and the difficulty of accessing information will leave the child searching for more. For adults, it offers several interesting articles on the mechanics of flight, but offers limited usefulness for anything else.

I loved the Paper Airplane section, but it was so good, I wonder if they merely strapped it on as they did with the Glider game.

The lone saving grace is the price. For $10, what do you expect? In that regard, this title is a great value and represents more than $10 in entertainment.

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