                              Wild Blue Yonder
                    Episode 1: 50 years of G's and Jets
                          Review by Danny Williams

        "Falcon 96-Bravo, you are cleared for takeoff runway three-one, maximum
performance departure approved."
        You grin at the inside of your oxygen mask. In this aircraft,
"maximum performance" means straight up like an Otis elevator. You wait a
second or two so whoever wants to watch the fun has time to get a view.
"Roger, tower. I'll stop the fun at 14,000 feet or so. Falcon 96-Bravo is
rolling...."
        ...and then you wake up. Rats, that's not a G-suit, it's just your
Power Rangers blanket wrapped around your legs.  Shake yourself loose, fire
up your multimedia computer (PC or Mac) and slide in a caddy holding the
Wild Blue Yonder CD. It's not quite a ride with the Blue Angels, but at
least you can learn about the equipment they use to put on those stunning
shows.
        First of all, Wild Blue Yonder is not another jet simulator. In
fact, it's not a flight simulator at all. Instead it is a information trove
about military jet aircraft reaching from the beginnings with the Nazi's Me
262 and the Bell XP-59 Airacomet to the latest B-2 Stealth Bomber and the
recently canceled V-22 Osprey. There are 20 aircraft in all on the disk,
divided into four major categories. The categories and aircraft are laid out
as follows:

The Jet Age:   XP-59 Airacomet, F-86 Sabre, Bell X-1, Me 262, B-47
Stratojet.

Vietnam:   B-52 Stratofortress, F-105 Thunderchief, A-6 Intruder, F-4
Phantom, SR-71 Blackbird.

Desert Storm:   F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-14 Tomcat, F-117
Nighthawk (a.k.a. Stealth Fighter), MiG29 Fulcrum.

Tomorrow:   YF-22 Lighting II, V-22 Osprey, X-31 EFM, B-2 Stealth, X-29 ATD.

        Running the program presents you with a screen showing the title of
each of the four categories and an aircraft representative of that period.
Pick one, and be shown the corresponding list of aircraft.
        Each aircraft has several different kinds of information available.
While perusing the list of options such as Stories, Specifications, Cockpit,
or Weapons, you can enjoy music from the period like Elton John's 1972
"Rocket Man" or "Mona Lisa" from 1949. The music stops, of course, when you
are reviewing the Performance section and wish to hear the engines roaring
in your ears. Of course, nothing in your living room can quite capture the
sound and smell and feeling of four 1,000 horsepower radial engines live in
person, but at least you can get the idea. Of course, your mileage will vary
by the quality of your speakers.
        Although the engine sounds and performance data and the film clips
(both flight and interviews) were excellent, I most enjoyed the cockpit
presentations. For each airplane, you may view the cockpit and a list of
what is in the cockpit. As your mouse pointer slides over an object on the
instrument panel (say, an altimeter), the word "Altimeter" in the list
lights up and a red box is drawn around the altimeter. Keep rolling your
mouse and all the items are properly identified. It works the other way, too
-- rolling over a name in the list ("where the heck is the IFF parrot?")
will draw the red box in the picture. I enjoyed imagining a mission in the
"office" of each of these significant birds. The accurate photos made it a
breeze.
        Wild Blue Yonder comes with a thin booklet that does double duty as
an installation/troubleshooting manual and a "yearbook"  for each of the
time periods addressed in the CD. Instructions are thin for good reason --
the program is very self explanatory and simple to install and operate. Even
so, support phone numbers and email addresses are listed in the first two
pages. I find this a refreshing change from manuals that have NO phone
numbers or have them buried in appendix G and printed in 6pt Old English
with the hopes that no one will call. The yearbook portion adds little to
the "hard" information on the glass disk, but is entertaining reading. It is
filled with happy little reminders about things like the invention of the
ball point pen and Hank Aaron's record breaking home run.
        Wild Blue Yonder runs on either a PC or a Mac with a CD and a sound
card. Specific minimum hardware requirements are as follows:

PC: 386-33 or better, Windows 3.1 or better, 4 Mb RAM, Hard drive with 2Mb
free (optionally 5mb), CD-ROM, SVGA, Sound Blaster or 100% compatible Mouse.

Macintosh: IIci, IIfx, IIvx, LC III, LC 475, LC 520, LC 550, LC 575,
Performa 450, 460, 466, 467, 475, 550, 560,575, 577, 578, 600, Centris
model, Quadra model, or Power Mac model, System 7, 4Mb RAM, Hard Drive with
2Mb free (optionally 5Mb), CD-ROM with 150Kb/sec sustained transfer rate,
256-color (8-bit) graphics at 640x480 resolution.

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