The Art of Outdoor Navigation - Know The Way
Price: £19.95 (including postage and packing)
What is it? CD-ROM outdoors navigation course, needs a
200MHz Pentium 2 plus Windows 95 or higher and 64MB of RAM or a 200
MHz plus Power Mac, OS 8.1 or above and 64 MB of RAM. And, of course,
a 4-speed CD ROM drive.
Features: Pretty much all the basics you can think of plus
a few more together with an outdoor information section that's really
little more than advertorial showcasing some manufacturers' web sites
and promotions for magazines.
Wouldn't it be great if you could step into the outdoors like Keanu
Reeves in The Matrix then just navigate blithely around: walked off a
cliff? Never mind, just start again. And that's just what the Art of
Outdoor Navigation isn't. What it is, is a worthy halfway house
between book learning and the practical, on the ground experience and
practice which is the only way to really hone your navigational
skills.
Experienced outdoors instructor and industry bod Martyn Hearn has
done a really thorough job of covering all the bases in a really,
well, thorough way. It's leagues ahead of most of the dull navigation
manuals on the shelves and Martyn together with designers, Bonington
New Media (yes, that Bonington, or rather his son) have managed to
use the interactivity of the medium to graphically illustrate things
like the way contours relate to different landscape features and to
depict key navigational techniques.
The final 'test' section tries to recreate a walk through the
Scottish hills and allows you to use cunning on-screen compass
techniques to take bearings and relate your position to actual photos
of the terrain. Very neat, though occasionally the navigation
actually through the CD isn't quite as intuitive as it might have
been. Alanis Morisette would have found that 'ironic', but then what
does she know about navigation.
The good news is that you don't have to take our word for it.
Check out the Outdoor
Navigation web site and you can try some of the CD's features out
for free as well as buy on line.
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The Bottom Line This is much
better than the books we've seen anyway, and makes good use
of the interactivity of the medium to be more involving than
the written word. It's not quite as 'fun' as the blurb
promises though, it's a shame it didn't borrow more from the
computer game world, maybe even inject a little gore, when
you pick the wrong line... Navigation's still all about
practice in the real world, but this will set you on the
right track and, er, map out the basics for you with all the
main areas covered along with some quite advanced
techniques. We're not going to rate it for effectiveness
till we've let a beginner loose on it though, watch this
space. Best bit is the rotating compass needle on the main
index, it'll go round dead quick...
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Pushed for time:
Neat use of the CD medium to produce a thorough
navigation course that's more interesting to use than most
of the books we've seen. Not quite as 'fun' as it claims to
be and it's still just a prelude to garnering practical
experience in the hills, but what it will do is give you an
armoury of basic techniques and tricks which aren't all as
intuitive as you might imagine. Check the web site for
mouse-on idea of what it's like.
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Navigate me through hyperspace to the Outdoor
Navigation web site... Oh purleez.
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