There has been much hype about this particular CD on the various on-line web sites and after much work, the product has been finished and is nearing full publication and distribution. An initial version of this with only the basic skeleton looked quite promising. The material on the CD case touts it as including "..extremely detailed and complex information about the Mig-29 Fulcrum..... Simply, all you ever wanted to know about a modern fighter aircraft."  Quite a lot to live up to.

So how close does it come to reaching these goals?

When one first loads in the CD, one needs three programs: Two are provided on the CD-ROM itself and the third, a Div-X player for the movies, needs to be downloaded from their website. Not a problem and easy to do.

Next, you are presented with a screen that shows the various sections of the CD. It is broken down into three parts: a historical section, a section on the RD-33 engine and one on the aircraft itself.

The Historical section includes the history of the Mig-29 itself, a history of OKB Mig, and background on the important personalities. In the Mig-29 historical section is a subsection on current and past Mig-29 operators, each with a small profile and number of aircraft operated. There are profiles in the Mig historical section where you can select a Mig type (such as the Mig-3) and get a larger profile and a technical description of the plane.

There is a lot of use of embedded frames and sub frames with slider bars that allow you to read all the material there. The overall design of the CD is well done, though the proliferation of sub-frames in some areas is a bit distracting and makes for some very narrow sections on which to put the text.

The second major section is on the engine. In this part there is an overall description, a detail section and a principle of operations section. The detail section has a lot of photos, blueprints and schematics in it. None of the photos are labeled so unless you are somewhat knowledgeable on turbojet engines, it will not mean much to you. In the principle of operations section are several animations showing the basic principles of operation of the major sections of the engine such as the engine itself, the afterburner and the burner cans/fuel control. Very well done and a nice addition.

The final section is the biggie. This one includes weapons, aerodynamics (flaps, slats, etc), flight characteristics, construction, curiosities (like de-icing protocol), modeling and an archive. Included in these sections are many photos, animations and movies. The two I'll concentrate on are the modeling and archive sections.

The modeling section includes a section on camouflages and markings. In this one you can choose an aircraft by country and get a quality downloaded image of the markings in the three major scales (1/72, 1/48, and 1/32) that you can then use to print your own decals. In addition, there is information on the various paint schemes and colors that can be used to duplicate them. There is also a section on upgrading the existing kits to make more modern versions that includes plans that you can download. If you are reading this review, you are a modeler and you will find this part of the CD to be an immense help and quite informative.

The Archives section contains a plethora of movies and photographs of the Mig-29. Again, to be honest, the movies are ok, but are obviously taken with a home video recorder. The days chosen were poor as well as the images are either backlit or very dark due to a cloudy day. The photographs are fairly good. Not sure what use seeing four silhouettes against the sky are, but there are a number of similar images. There are also lots of close-ups of the plane as well as peeks inside various compartments of the plane. It is obvious that the makers of the CD had pretty free access to aircraft under maintenance. Quite a few of these shots were repetitive, I mean, how many photos of the fin of a plane are really needed? There must have been literally dozens. Better editing of these shots would improve things in later offerings. One doesn't need 600 photos where 200 would do quite well.

Finally, I'd like to mention that the CD will change your screen resolution to 800x600 so you need to make sure your system can handle the switch. There is a full list of requirements inside the front cover of the CD. Basically you need a 200Mhz Pentium with 64 Meg of RAM and a 2Meg PCI graphics card. Most computers out there will be able to meet the minimums with no problem.

So, is this CD everything it is touted to be? Well, I'd have to say that if it isn't, then it has come darn close. Because of the nature of the beast, there isn't the long and lengthy historical write-up that normally comes with a book on the development and operation of an aircraft. However, books don't generally have the kind of visual impact that this CD will have. I'm quite impressed and have never seen as much information on the Mig-29 in one place before.

Many thanks to Kreativ Multimedia for providing the review copy. Your support is appreciated.

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