Tom Thompson
STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION INTERACTIVE TECHNICAL MANUAL by Simon & Schuster Interactive, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020, (212) 698-7000, $69.95
When I heard about a CD-ROM published by Simon & Schuster titled Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive Technical Manual, my first thought was ``shovelware.'' In 1991, Pocket Books published Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual. I suspected that the text of this book was just shoveled onto a CD platter. As it turns out, I was right and wrong: right, in that the book was used as a source of information; wrong, in that as the first multimedia product showcasing Apple's QuickTime VR (for virtual reality) this CD-ROM becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
QuickTime VR is an imaging technology that
lets you examine a room through a full 360 degrees. Simple swipes of the mouse direct your field of vision to objects of interest. The stage sets used in the TV series have been captured in QuickTime VR format and are available for your inspection. You can sit in the captain's chair on the bridge and look about you, check out the length of the matter/antimatter reactor from floor to ceiling in engineering, and open drawers in the sick bay to examine some of the high-tech gadgetry.
An outside view of the Enterprise lets you see the spaceship from all angles, including the top and bottom (a full 360-degree view on two axes). It's like an outside tour of the ship, using the mouse to steer a shuttle.
The panning motion was very smooth on both a Power Mac 8100/80 at the office and a 33-MHz 68040-based Quadra 800 at home. Although QuickTime VR can do an acceptable job with 8-bit color, you'll get the best results viewing the scenes in 16-bit color, and a dual-speed CD-ROM drive is a must. Combined wit
h background sounds and QuickTime VR's imaging magic, this CD-ROM makes the Enterprise an adventure game that you can wander about in and explore for hours--without getting mugged by a dwarf, no less. I certainly enjoyed it.
Tom Thompson is a BYTE senior technical editor at large. You can reach him on the Internet or BIX at
tom_thompson@bix.com
.
Star Trek Meets QuickTime VR
