OT: "NASA Museum" PC/MAC Software Initial Review

[ScottE]

I picked up the "NASA Museum" software package for $4.99+tax at a local AMES
store this week. It consists of 8 CDROM disks, each representing another
"building" in a virtual museum.

The disks are labeled as follows.

NASA
Mercury
Gemini
Apollo
Skylab
Shuttle
ISS
Mars

The basic scenario is that you wander (slowly) around a virtual reality
museum with 3D modeled spacecraft display, and "portraits" on the walls.
When you turn to look at a picture, you can click on a set of headphones and
here a few words describing the picture. The pictures I looked at were out
of the NASA archives. They're not very large or detailed, though. When you
stop at a museum exhibit, you are given the option to play various movies or
audio clips. The movies look to be stock NASA footage.

There's also a couple of simulators in the buildings. I tried my hand at
landing a LEM on the Moon. The controls are pretty extensive, and not
documented (that I found in my short walkthough). One of the first things I
found was a Camera button, which rewarded me with a 3rd person view of the
CM/SM/LEM stack whizzing along across a star field. The assumption is that
you're in Lunar orbit. Your task is to get the LEM safely landed. It's not
just a matter of firing the engine, either. First you have to undock, which
requires arming, then firing a separation charge. The first pass through I
made, my mission ended very early, because I ran out of oxygen. My next pass
I selected an O2 Tank, and enabled the flow, and made it a bit further. I
got the descent engine armed and fired a burn to slow myself down, but
couldn't figure how to do the attitude controls in time. I ended up crashing
on the surface in a little puff of flame. You can bet I'll hang out in the
museum to see if there are some operating tips, then try again.

It's definitely not the most stable piece of software I've seen. It wouldn't
install on a Windows 2000 machine (my laptop), but installed without
complaint on my Windows 98 desktop machine. It wasn't a very friendly interf
ace, either. Yes, it's like being in a museum, where you follow paths past
exhibits. There are a couple of shortcuts through connecting tunnels, but
once you're in an exhibit hall, it's one click for a couple of strides of
motion. Definitely tedious when you can see the thing you want to inspect at
the far end of a long walkway.

So, it's a mixed bag, but the NASA movies and audio, along with the
simulator, are worth the $4.99 to me.

--

ScottE - I canna change the laws of physics
==_O

[Bck2DFtr]

Sounds almost like a Marine recruitment CD I got a year or so ago. Pretty
sweet. You got to tour a Marine center and learn a bit of history, see
different jobs the Corp had to offer and so on. Very nice.