Customer Reviews

National Geographic Presents: 3D Globe

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I want access to a world atlas that help me understand current events. I like to listen to short wave radio broadcasts, as well. For example, I wanted to see the details associated with the Israeli-Lebanon conflict and using online media was a brutal experience over my 56k dialup connection. My hard copy atlas was helpful, but a little out of date, so I looked at software products. The MS program was expensive and it had many options that I didn't need or want. (I'm not a kid anymore and don't want online help with my homework, for example.) And the reviews were not too favorable for the MS product, either. 3D Globe comes with a free Lunar Map, as well. I have a small telescope. While this is not a necessity, it is a nice addition.

This 3d Globe thing looked like an easy to use product so I bought it. At $19 I figure I've made bigger mistakes. It arrived today so I put in CD #1. When it asked me what kind of installation I wanted, I noticed that "custom" said it would run without inserting the CD. (Don't you hate the products that make you hunt that down every time you want to use it?) I've got plenty of room on my hard drive, so off we go. After a short while it wanted CD #2, and continued. I had to go through the XP START menu to find 3D GLOBE, but now have it "pinned" so I can access it quickly. (Every other product I've got insists on putting an icon on the desktop.) But that is a trivial nit pick.

Once started, I was immediately impressed with the graphics. I zoomed in on the Moon and all the craters' names appeared. (You can toggle these on and off, I think.) The zoom-in was more than I needed, too - very nice.

Now for the "big test." I brought up the Earth at Night - gorgeous. I switched to Political Globe and brought up the control box. I selected FIND and searched for Mundelein, IL (a former residence). The zoom was only one level, so I didn't see the detail I was looking for, but considering the size of the planet, that may have required an order of magnitude more disk space, and it's enough for me.

I searched for what I thought was a fictitious town in Iran (from a TV show), but it was there! I selected the Nile River and it, too, was centered and I could zoom into it, as well.

Over all, this is a real bargain and I am very pleased with it.

This product is as advertised by National Geographic.3D Globe is very much an atlas in digital form. 3D Globe provides the user with the ability to navigate around the world, with the option of selecting specific countries and researching statistics of every kind on the selected nation,including its history. The navigation tools that are afforded to the user permit the user to acquire closeup views of national boundaries, regions, states, and cities within countries. Additionally, 3D Globe provides the researcher with tools to examine ecological regions that occupy the world as well as climate patterns. A user, for example, can locate volcanoes, deserts, continental drift patterns, mountain ranges, etc... 3D Globe also has an excellent Moon feature. When selected, the Moon feature provides the viewer with a completely mapped out view of the Moon that can be navigated as the world can be navigated in the Globe views. This is an excellent learning tool for children, students, and the entire family. 3D Globe can be used as a digital reference source for research or just for fun! I highly recommend this product as a supplement to an atlas or as an atlas replacement.

This product lived up to all expectations.The product is user friendly and gives a tremendous amount of information on the differenct workd areas.

3D Globe doesn't seem to DO anything much. Click on a city name and it does nothing. Click on ANYTHING and it does nothing. It doesn't even zoom closer than a standard state highway map. So the globe rotates and shows night and day... and you can look up cities and countries. You can do that with an encyclopedia. By comparison, Encarta is a thrill ride IMHO.

To me this software performs like something from the $1.00 CD clearance rack.

I bought this software because I teach a class on Geography. National Geographic is well known for producing excellent maps, however with this product I was a bit disappointed. The drawbacks are many, and include not being able to zoom in very far to observe details, regions within countries are not named, nor is there a display option to show them, political maps do not show state, or any other internal political boundaries within countries. Overall, it has some good uses, but I find myself still accessing google earth more often than this software.

And it gets better as you become more adept at scrolling through the globe/map. For what it is - and be perfectly clear: it's just what it says it is: a 3D Globe - it allows for a considerable range of information. There's also text about countries and so forth; but the text is extremely limited in that it gives very little geographical data about the countries (such as highest and lowest points and average height). Also, the topography is not as good or as detailed as on a regular atlas (e.g.,it gives no indication of relative heights of mountain ranges). When using the software, it helps to also have an encyclopedia open so as to toggle back and forth to get the kind of detailed information that 3D Globe doesn't have. I'd have given this software only three stars except I have a feeling it's about as good as any other of its kind on the market (which, presumably, isn't a huge market anyway). All in all, it's worth the price.

I gave this as a gift in the Fall to a very paper-oriented individual . .they wanted a real globe or update Atlas. They were skeptical, but were quickly won over by this product. I thank the other reviewers who shared their objectivity, and together we've "dragged" a software skeptic into the world of "stronger" globe options!