Take Home Death Valley National Park in Virtual Reality [CD-ROM]

Paul Fretheim (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2, 1999

This CD-ROM utilizes Apple Computer's QuickTime VR technology to provide the user with a Virtual Reality experience of Death Valley National Park. With just a click of the mouse the user soars through the park in Virtual Reality, from peak to peak to valley and dune and back again!

See the view from Telescope Peak, Bennett Peak, the Badwater Playa on a midsummer's day at 124 degrees, the Sierra Nevada from summits in the Inyo and White mountains, the ancient bristlecone pines of the White mountains, and over 100 other fantastic views of Death Valley's incomparable scenery.

Also included are 85 spectacularly beautiful still images in several resolutions, including high resolution files for printing and files that are sized perfectly for e-mail postcards. Slide show software is included for desktop displays.

Death Valley history is told in 4 complete books which are classics of the Death Valley literature and 29 other articles of Death Valley lore, including a 1930 interview with Shorty Harris, most famous of the Death Valley prospectors, and a 1940 interview with Ba-vanda-sava-nu-ki, or "Indian George," the patriarch of the Panamint Shoshone who lived to be 107. This amazing individual's life spanned the stone age life of his youth to the nuclear age of the 1940s.

All textual items are searchable utilizing the search engine provided.

Also included on the CD: A complete set of USGS Topographic Maps at 1:2500000 scale, Mitchell's 1846 Map of the West

A browser and QuickTime are required.

Installers for Netscape Communicator and QuickTime are provided on the CD.

Mac or Windows compatible.

Mac system requirements: Power PC; System 7.5 or later; 16 megs RAM.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Paul Fretheim was born in Dekalb, Illinois in 1951, but never lived there. During his earliest years his father was a traveling Gospel singer and preacher, and Paul and his family, which consisted of his mother and father and older sister, lived in a masonite trailer they towed with a 1947 Studebaker. The family traveled a circuit that took 6 months each way to cover back and forth between Los Angeles and Chicago along Route 66.

In 1954 the family settled down in southwestern Wisconsin, where Paul went to one room country school for the first three grades, walking 1-1/2 miles through the woods and swamps to school and back each day. "My life then," Paul writes, "was much more like 'Little House on the Prairie' than life in a modern city today."

The family then moved to Frankfort, Michigan, a midwestern version of Cape Cod, located on Lake Michigan, not far from the now Sleeping Bear National Seashore.

After a few years alternating between bumming in Aspen, Colorado and going to college in Kalamazoo, Paul and his wife Maureen moved to an Indian reservation in western Montana and went "back to the land," living in a small log cabin carved out of the wilderness using 17th century techniques garnered from the Foxfire series.

During the latter part of the 10 years on the reservation, Paul completed a degree in Elementary education at the University of Montana, and became involved with the introduction of the then brand new technology of micro computers to education.

In 1983 Paul moved to Seattle, and for the next 12 years taught a special class for bright and gifted children for the Seattle Public Schools. During this time Paul also earned an M.Ed. degree in Educational Instructional Technology from the University of Washington in Seattle.

In 1992, en route to Albuquerque to speak at a conference on educational

technology, Paul passed through Death Valley for the first time, and fell in love with this beautiful desert. Since that time he has returned again and again.

In 1998 Paul left public education and moved to Independence, the county seat of Inyo county, where Death Valley is located, to work on the creation of a series of educational virtual reality CD-ROMs on Death Valley National Park, and now makes his home in the tiny village of Independence, CA, in the shadow of the great eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada.

Product Details

• CD-ROM
• Publisher: Inyo Pro (July 2, 1999)
• ISBN-10: 1929434006
• ISBN-13: 978-1929434008
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,053,039 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Death Valley Without the Inconvenience, January 1, 2000

By 

Terry (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Take Home Death Valley National Park in Virtual Reality (CD-ROM)

Having just returned from Death Valley two days ago, The experience is fresh in my mind, and the photographs are in my hands. Pauls CD is is quite good. The 360 degree panoramic photographs give one a much greater sense of what it is like to be there than ordinary pictures can, even panoramic ones. All that is missing are the air temperature, smells, and eerie silence that the real thing offers. The CD will not replace being there, but it is a good pre-trip teaser or post trip souvenir. My only complaints are that the interface is a bit clumsey, and panning is a bit slow and jerky. These are more a problem with the state of the technology than anything else. A fast computer helps. In spite of these shortcomings, I think the CD is a good buy. Besides all the photos, there are many books and articles, the details of which can be seen at the inyopro.com website. System requirements are Windows 95 or greater, 100 MHz 486 with 16 Megs ram or Power PC 16 Megs of ram with system 7.5 or later.

5.0 out of 5 stars Far too cool!, December 8, 1999

By 

Paul McGinnis - See all my reviews

This review is from: Take Home Death Valley National Park in Virtual Reality (CD-ROM)

This CD is a great example of Apple's QuickTimeVR technology, where you can "look" all around you, in 360 degrees.

A neat trick is that there are hidden areas in each panorama that you can click on, that will take you to different panoramas.

This CD-ROM is really useful if you are planning a trip to Death Valley.