DataLife Engine - Softnews Media Group

Warplanes: A History Of Aerial Combat — интерактивная энциклопедия боевых самолетов от первой мировой войны до настоящего времени. В приложении можно посмотеть основные технико тактические характеристики боевых машин, детально рассмотреть строение самолета и прочитать историю создания и эксплуатации самолета.

Год: 2011
Дата релиза в App Store: 30 июня 2011
Версия: 1.0.0
Разработчик: Gameloft
Системные требования: iPad с iOS 3.2 и выше
Язык интерфейса: Multi
Формат файла: .ipa
Стоимость: $6.99
Таблетка: Вылечено
Размер: 453 Мб


Также присутствует удобное разбиение самолетов по классам:
истребители;
бомбордировщики;
специальные;
старинные времен первой и второй мировых войн;
самолеты времен холодной войны;
современные.

Всего приложение содержит описания 43 наиболее известных самолетов, что на мой взгляд слишком мало для такой цены. Надеюсь, будет обновление с новыми моделями.

От себя добавлю, что книги по самолетостроению и термодинамике в туалете читаются особенно хорошо.

Информация:
Description
“This is the kind of specialized content that the iPad was designed to consume.” - 148 Apps about Gameloft’s first book-app, War In The Pacific.
Take off with Gameloft’s 2nd book-app that lets you explore 43 of history’s most innovative and important war planes.

You won’t just read about the historic role of these amazing aircraft, you will interact with them through rotatable 3D models. Peruse a gallery of over 200 HD pictures plus interactive cutaway diagrams and schematics that let you look closely at their every detail. You can even watch certain planes in action with a wide collection of videos. This app was designed to not just inform, but entertain, whether you’re an expert or just a fan of war planes.
This book-app features:
• 43 historic war planes including fighters, bombers, reconnaissance and more
• Accurate 3D reproductions for each plane
• A gallery of over 200 photographs
• Detailed information including each plane’s combat role, historic significance & interesting facts
• Technical illustrations: Schematic/blueprints and color illustrations
• A stats screen that lets you compare planes side-by-side.
• 15 videos of the aircraft in action: watch them taking off, maneuvering and firing weapons.
• Interactive cutaway diagram drawings
• Interactive timeline showing the evolution of war planes

Customer Reviews
Getting Closer...

by Alan Crawford
This title is a definite step up from the likes of Osprey's "Stick Some Profiles Together And Call It A Book" titles. You get 3D images (even if they appear pre-rendered and can only be spun around from one point of view), you get photos, you get a little video, you get a reasonable general write-up on each type and you get some schematics and nice, interactive (barely) cutaways (they still have numbers on the components from their print origins, but now you click on the number and get a little pop-up description - so the numbers are really completely meaningless).

Some of the rendered models are absolutely gorgeous - from the credits they've gone to some of the better on-line stores for 3D content to purchase them. However, the quality of the renderings varies dramatically. The Spitfire is a joke - reasonable outline for a late-model Griffon-engined Spit, but in a completely spurious color scheme. Other aircraft have no markings at all, partial markings (tail codes but no national markings) or somewhere between (the MiG-21 has a Soviet star on one side - but not on the other). Some of the renderings look rather strange - the F-15 has an odd green cast with green tinted canopy, the Zero is a rather excessively bright green with panels that seem to alternate between flat and glossy, and the X-15 is almost featureless with an odd sheen and some rather odd kinks in the outline.

Now I was never really expecting anything fantastic from a book-app that tries to summarize the history of aerial combat with just 43 aircraft, but the content chosen is probably the book's biggest flaw. One WWI aircraft, ten WWII aircraft, one Korean war, and everything else modern. On top of that some of the choices are just bizarre - why does a title devoted to aerial combat include two purely experimental X-planes (X-15 and X-29) and another purely experimental Russian type (the Su-47 Berkut)? If they were only three entries amongst hundreds, it'd be understandable, but to leave out many important types yet include non-warplanes? At times it seems as though the choice of aircraft has been determined by the 3D models that were available, but the X-15 seems to negate that - the 3D model is lousy, there are a grand total of 3 photos and a rather basic 3-view, and that's it. It's like somebody decided that the X-15 was going in no matter what. The entry for the MiG-33 "Super Fulcrum" is also rather odd - they basically admit it's a dead designation, that the aircraft first shown under those names are later multirole versions of the MiG-29 such as the MiG-29ME, and then the only additional content they offer for the type is an "artist's impression" (there are plenty of photos of modern MiG-29s around) and very poor schematic that look as though they date from the depths of the Cold War, when little was known about these types and vague outlines were all that was available.

I'd also question the need to include the Su-34 and the Su-27 - when space is so limited, do we really need two variations on the same airframe given separate entries? One of the Su-34 photos is even misplaced, being found amongst the photos for the Su-27.

All of that said, this is still miles ahead of the pre-packaged still image slideshows that have appeared from the likes of Osprey. If the quality control on the 3D models had been better - the shapes generally seem good but the textures range from very high quality to something that looks like it was knocked together in an hour or two. It'd have been nice to actually be able to "Explore 43 Major Warplanes In History", rather than "Explore About 35 Actual Distinct Warplanes Mainly From The Past 20 Years". Drop the experimental types, ditch the near-duplicates, fill in the remaining space with some of the many, many important aircraft that have been ignored, then texture all of the models to a consistently high quality.

The video content also seems a little gratuitous - on my iPad 2 it was somewhat jerky and not of particularly high quality, and I'm guessing the video took up a disproportionate amount of space. That said, some of the footage is interesting. The photo content is excellent, I have to admit, although it'd have been nice if "HD photos" meant "high resolution photos you could zoom" rather than "sized to fit the iPad screen".

All in all, it's a step in the right direction, but there's still a long way to go until the potential for this type of title is really fulfilled. Is it worth $6.99? Well, there's quite a lot here, but the content is very variable in quality, so I have to say it isn't. Given the opportunity to unbuy this, I'd do so. This'll probably end up being uninstalled pretty quickly - it's too skimpy to be a useful reference resource, and once you've "Oooh"-ed at the nicer 3D models a couple of times, there's not very much here.

A fix? The basic approach is good. Make it modular - make the basic app free, then sell high-quality packs of targeted content at a low price. So maybe it comes with just half a dozen basic models in the free version, but you can then install "US Navy Fighters Of The 1960s" or "Soviet Attack Aircraft Of WWII" or "Fighters Of The Korean War" or whatever. That'd be worth having - almost limitless potential to expand it, without the problems of having to squeeze the entire history of combat aircraft down to 43 types.

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