Database
Sample page
CD-Rom Corner
Walt Crawford
The World on a Platter: CD-ROM Atlases
The World on a Platter: CD-ROM Atlases
Some people love atlases for their own sake, exploring maps as a substitute for exploring the world. Good CD-ROM atlases can't duplicate the scope and beauty of the best printed maps-yet I find them fascinating. They can go far beyond printed atlases when it comes to investgating the world, its nations, and its peoples.
This column covers four 1997 world atlas CD-ROMs, including all the atlases that I could find in local stores. (I didn't find Dorling Kindersley's Cartopedia in four stores with extended selections and Mindscape's atlases also proved elusive.) These four are 3D Talking Globe from Now What's "Small Blue Planet" series (henceforth "3D Globe"), Compton's Interactive World Atlas 1997 (henceforth "Compton's"), which is bundled with Compton's Complete Street Guide (reviewed separately), ABC 3D Atlas 97 from Creative Wonders (henceforth "ABC"), and Encarta 97 World Atlas from Microsoft (henceforth "Encarta").
The ideal CD-ROM world
My ideal CD-ROM world atlas would include detailed composite satellite views of the earth both by day and by night; accurate geophysical and topographical maps at reasonable levels of detail; accurate political maps with sensible level of detail; and user-controlled options for displays. Large-scale maps would always view the earth as a globe, using flat projections only for smaller areas. Maps would never be pixilated and would always be pleasing, accurate, and meaningful. Legends would be instantly available, and the scale would always be clear.
You should be able to zoom in or out, move around the globe using a hand or pointers, or go directly to a city, nation, continent, or other place from a detailed finding list. The ideal finding list includes all the places you would plausibly look for without absurd or inaccurate details. It makes lookup easy by jumping to the appropriate alphabetic area as you enter a name letter by letter. The ideal atlas includes maps so flexible and detailed that any item in the finding list leads to a visible point on a map.
The ideal CD-ROM world atlas is more than just superb maps. It should also explain the world, its nations, and its people. From any point on a map or by selecting from available lists you should be able to do most or all of the following:
- Get recent population figures and summary descriptive and historical notes on any significant city, and go from there directly to the appropriate country.
- Learn about the geography, history, climate, government, economy, and culture of a country and its people, including detailed statistics; see the flag; hear the anthem; hear samples of local music (fully identified); and see pictures highlighting the country and its people (fully identified and credited).
- Hear native pronunciations of standard phrases, the country's name, and possibly city names.
- Explore the facts and figures of nations and regions through hundreds of relevant statistics, with presentation of those statistics customized to your needs-e.g., ranked tables for selected nations, a region, or the world, statistical maps for a region or the world, and possibly timeline graphs for statistics over time. The source of statistical information should be readily available, as should the dates for changing statistics.
The ideal CD-ROM atlas might even add ways to learn about the world in general-for example, visual essays on aspects of ecology and the environment.
The ideal CD-ROM is stable and attractive, making excellent use of color, scaling to fill high-resolution screens, and offering to export maps, graphs, and textual files with credit attached. It uses screen space efficiently, so that maps, pictures, and essays have plenty of room. It has AutoPlay under Windows 95, installs politely and uses a modest amount of disk space, runs correctly under AutoPlay, and never crashes or hangs the system on exit.
Ratings Summary
[90–100] Excellent. Highly recommended.
[80–89] Very good. Recommended.
[70–79] Good. Well worth considering.
[60–69] Fair. Flawed but may meet certain needs.
[1–59] Poor
[90–100] Excellent. Highly recommended.
[80–89] Very good. Recommended.
[70–79] Good. Well worth considering.
[60–69] Fair. Flawed but may meet certain needs.
[1–59] Poor
That's a tall order, and none of these products does it all. I'm not sure that you can do all this well within the 660MB limit of current CD-ROMs. Two of these atlases do exceptionally well, however, and between them they meet nearly all the criteria of my ideal atlas-albeit at a total expense of $60 to $100.
I didn't include Mindscape World Atlas 6.0.0 in this review because it's somewhat out of date, but it's useful to.