Commercial product review

Instant Airplane Maker

Product name and company

Instant Airplane Maker by Abacus. Released November 1998

Product objectives

The coloring of pre-defined aircrafts and writing names on it.

Is it good or is it bad?

With the free available utilities it is possible to repaint planes. Just convert a texture to a bitmap file, recolor it, export the bitmap to texture and done. But this need the right utilities and some calculation of the position of text and colors. Instant Airplane automates this all.

It is a very easy to use program based on a few new and good aircraft types (A319/320/321,B747 and DC9) to colorize planes and (f.i.) write your own name on it. Can be impressing to show your friends your own plane....... My 12 year old son learned the trick in 5 minutes.

The program is not able to change the aircraft model and shape but it includes the panels for the planes. Full installation takes a lot of space on your HD (4500 files, mostly bitmaps, using about 54bMb!!); a more sophisticated routine to call the color schemes for the different planes would cut the amount of disks space and install time with at least 75%.

My conclusion. If you want to take some time to make your own plane-design: Use the available freeware files. If you don't have time enough and you don't mind spending another $40: get this box.

 

Can it be improved?

Yes. The next version can add the possibility to change shape and flight model. This will definitely add more value to the product.