And Nels, being the always buried to the hilt I could sure use a hand would you could you help me kind guy that we all know that he is, asked me if I would like to evaluate another program for all you pilots out there. So naturally being the super nice yes I break my arm patting myself on the back kind of guy said "sure why not". Well gang, the program is called Air Show 98 and I gotta tell ya that as far as I can tell its another goody worth puttin' on the ol' hard drive.

The program is put out by Colorado Technologies and contains three air show airports from around the world including Oshkosh (heaven forbid forgetting the mother of all airshows) and Reno, Nevada for Gold Cup air racing. Now you can either be a spectator and watch an F-6F get put through its paces at the different airports with a basic airshow performance OR you can become the pilot and fly the airshows (just how good are you?) in one of the Airshow aircraft, complete with sound effects and airshow director call out...and if you fly it really good, applause after landing because they are a graded performance and there are rewards and penalties (I'm not kidding). The spectator part which is a demo video for me doubles as a killer screen saver and I have had more than one person sit and watch intently as the F-6 is wrung out across the screen. And the video starts at a new airport after the end of the previous show so the scenery changes.

Also included with this is an air racing segment, Reno Gold Cup style. Now for you speed gotta haves who thrive on high G's and having your heart rate pushed off the graph, tighten your seatbelts, this one's for you. You have a select choice of aircraft to fly to choose from, and they all fly extremely well. Myself, I prefer the good ol' "Jug" or P-47 Thunderbolt for those uninitiated into the realm of WWII aircraft.

Now you don't have any Mustangs to choose from and "Rare Bear" is not to be found (besides, with only enough wing to get the engine into the air and a sink rate approaching that of a streamlined manhole cover not many of us could fly it), but what you do have is a nice cross section of WWII aircraft that fly hard and fast to race in from around the world. I chose the "Jug" because with all that motor in the nose when you push the nose over from 500 feet to dive for the course and get down to business the acceleration is very quick because of that massive hunk of iron in the nose. A nicety about this part of the program is the scenery and the sound (it actually sounds like a big Pratt) of the engine. On a scale of 1-10 about a 9.

Now I know some of you might say that there could be improvements in the scenery and everything, but we all know that with denser scenery frame rates suffer on slower machines (I know, go buy a faster machine, most of us wish we could) thus eliminating the thrill of hurtling over the weeds at 360 knots just 100 feet off of the tops of those weeds. So a very good compromise was found with the setup of this part of the program, to which I can attest to a very smooth and realistically fast frame rate on a 133 MHz machine.

As you will notice in this shot (new pilots shouldn't try this as the picture you take could be the ground coming at you at an extreme rate of acceleration) that I am making the turn at the number 4 pylon at 360 knots IAS at 250 feet (base altitude is 6000 feet) off of the weeds. Now the only reason that I am not lower is that I had no desire to become part of those weeds. You try taking a picture at this speed at this altitude and tell me what happens. For those of you wondering if this has a multiplayer ability the answer is a resounding YES. Either by modem, cable or network. Which means if six of your co-workers purchase Airshow 98 and you have already covertly loaded FS98 you can load it at the office and have at it during lunch (imagine the look on the boss's face as you round the number one pylon).

The aircraft are stable to a point and after that point is reached you had better know how to fly or you will become a smoking hole in the ground.

Now the setup of this program is relatively simple and as always you need to pay attention to what it is asking you or telling you what to do. You will need your FS98 CD handy as you will need to load it as Air Show 98 uses the scenery files as well as some of the other parts of the program. It sets up a short cut from your desktop so you don't have to hunt for it to use it. Upon starting Air Show 98 you will have a menu pop up in front of you that allows you to chose your aircraft to start with.

As you can see, you do have a nice selection to chose from and the real beauty of this program is you can toggle back to FS98 using the FS98 menu.

The instructions included are easy to understand (takes all the fun out of it for you rocket scientist type doesn't it) and they have also included a bit of history about each aircraft as well as a bit of information about the air show sites.

Now for those of you wondering about being able to use 3Dfx with Air Show 98 this is what is in the manual concerning this: The 3Dfx technology applied to FS98 gives excellent results on how scenery textures look, on shading effects, cloud rendering, etc. Some problems arise with the cockpit panels but the graphic rendition is very satisfactory.

It is not the same concerning planes seen from the outside view. Generally, the heavy jetliners put up with this treatment pretty well because of their simple shape, and almost generalized use of white as a background color. When switching to 3Dfx, a closer look at the planes having more complex shapes and textures (and this is the case of all the planes in Air Show 98) reveals two types of display anomaly: the materialization of white dots at the junction of some elements and above all a separate handling of the reflection and shades for each component that is undoubtedly prejudicial to the homogeneity of the general aspect of the model.

The aircraft designer chose to disable the 3Dfx video card so that users can discover the planes of Air Show 98 as he (the designer) created them and not as the 3Dfx video card interprets them.

Of course, the user can manually modify the Air Show 98 special configuration to his liking. All his usual display options and his 3Dfx video card can be reactivated without affecting Air Show 98. However, authors cannot be held responsible for possible graphic aberrations resulting from these modifications.

So gang, there you have it, straight from the book word for word. The only thing I could add is that you could try to use it in 3D and if it works so be it. But as it is out of the box it is a kick in the pants and a real challenge to fly either the air shows around the world or to skim the weeds out at Reno at 300+ knots.

And if you want to fly the Air Show aircraft in FS98 you can do that too. I do and for me to say that is saying something because usually for me flying a tail dragger the take off is not a problem. As I make the turn onto short final I might as well have Spalding painted on the fuselage and you can start to whistle "Sweet Georgia Brown" as I come over the fence headed for the tarmac. The boys in Satco could call me for double dribbling for the landing and yet with the aircraft of Air Show 98, even I can land a tail dragger and even make the all important "greaser" landing (the misses can't laugh anymore).

So for those of you who would like a change of pace and a really cool add-on to FS98 you might want to drop a bug in Santa's ear (butter up the missus and knock out that honey do list) and see if it shows up in your stocking. After all, you've been good all year haven't you? As for me, I think I am going to see if Santa has heard of the latest sale on computers and hardware add-ons and just maybe (ho ho ho). :-)

Curt May
Email: mttly1@clinton.net