|
In his continuing series of walkarounds, Chris “Toadman” Hughes has concentrated this volume to the M18 Hellcat and M39 Armored Utility Vehicle.
If you are using a Windows platform, the CD should start by itself to take you on a journey of the armored vehicles. I prefer to look at the images in a graphics program so as to be able to manipulate them. For this, I right click on the CD drive and click on Explore. This opens a folder where I can then right click on a file, ‘open with’, and choose the graphics program. Using a graphics program will let me zoom in, change the gamma or increase the brightness of an image.
Now, let’s get back to this CD. Inside there are 403 photos with two GIF files used as backgrounds. This last part is a nice feature to distinguish which vehicle one is ‘walking around’ aside from the captions.
The photo quality is excellent with a good resolution at 300dpi and a nice size of 1504 by 1000 pixels. This translates into clear images when printed. The pictures on this CD were taken at the Military Vehicle Technology Foundation (MVTF) also known as Jacques Littlefield’s collection and WW II US Military Vehicle Museum in San Rafael (for one of the Hellcats featured).
The autoplay feature has the user come to a table of contents which allows one to choose between the vehicles and an introduction page. Here, one can find a quick history on the vehicles, reference sources, and mission statement. This CD was created with the modeler in mind…and it shows.
Upon choosing the tank one wishes to ‘walk around’, a new table of contents appears for different sections of the Hellcat or Armored Utility Vehicle. These sections then list all the pages dedicated to the chosen section. Each HTML page has simple but interesting captions which point out details as well as a navigation which allows one to go to the next page, the previous page, the sections table of contents, or the main table of contents. Certainly a well thought out plan.
In some cases, a link is given to another page which allows the modeler to compare details. This was done for the details of the turret between the MVTF and WW II US Military Vehicle Museum examples of the M18.
Having the Academy M18 and AFV Club’s M18 kits, it was informative to see how much work awaits me to correct details which can be clearly seen on this CD.
All exterior details and most interior details are covered. One should never forget that these are restorations and, as accurate as MVTF usually is, compare the photos to period photos to ensure authenticity.
This CD-Rom is one of many references which I am really happy to have acquired. At the asking price, it is certainly a bargain when one considers that the average ten dollar book only gives about a 125 photos at most. I highly recommend the Toadman Walkarounds for any modeler whether on a budget or not! Get your copy by visiting: http://www.toadmanstankpictures.com/
|
