InventorLabs: Transportation
Reviewed by Ty Brewer
Published by Houghton Mifflin Interactive

Age Group: Age 8 and Up Type: Science Price: $30.00 US

Description:

InventorLabs: Transportation helps children discover the origins of modern day transportation with the inventors of planes, trains, and automobiles. InventorLabs: Transportation takes children to the very place these vehicles were invented, and allows the little explorer to examine the inventions. Children can navigate inside the labs of famous inventors and see the tools and inventions that made modern transportation possible. - Not!

InventorLabs: Transportation uses Apple's QuickTime VR to immerse the child in a virtual 3D world, allowing free movement within the labs. Interactive QuickTime movies allow the child to see behind the metal for the inner workings of carburetors, steam engines, and gears. Children can experiment with the 3D models of important pieces of each invention. (barely)

If you are wondering what happened to the inventions that didn't work, the old junk was evidently recycled, as this software package is complete junk. The content of this title is amazingly shallow - nothing here that couldn't fit in a one-page report (double-spaced) by a 5th grader. Each lab is mostly empty and many of the items the child can "explore" are useless. For instance, I found a "Shoe Boot." Hmmmm. Why would the inventor of the locomotive need a shoe boot? The answer (as told by the paid voice announcer) : He worked repairing boots before he built the locomotive. Wow, that enlightens me so much! That's just the kind of information I needed!

Features:

• Nice idea

Technical Aspects:

QuickTime VR is great technology, but I haven't seen a title that uses it effectively. This is no exception. QTVR allows easy navigation, but there is really nothing to navigate! Instead of conveying the information about these vehicles effectively, it comes across as a gimmick. Worse, I found bugs in the QTVR script that crashed the program.

Report and Conclusions:

This software lacks breadth and depth of content, lacks interactive features, and uses a poor interface. The bugs are unforgivable. I believe this title was assembled by an amatuer with a budget. What a shame.

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