This plug-in for Powerpoint 97 advertises clearly that it is compatible without a 3D graphics card but it is not recommended. Render times are not quick without the OpenGL compatible 3D graphics accelerator. they do work, and include nice sound effects.

Volume 1 has classic 3D transitions that we all recognize from TV transition effects. Volume 2 has 'contemporary transitions'. It includes 12 kinds of 3D animated transitions, each in several possible orientations. Thus you have a slide acting as a door opening and creaking, and you may choose that it opens vertically, horizontally or diagonally. behind the door you find the next slide waiting. Overall, the 12 transitions and various angles add up to over 70 attention-getting transition effects.

The 12 effects are power panels, reassembling tiles, twirling circles, squares and diamonds, counter-rotating panels, spring away, fall in place, fall out, open up, shut up and creaking doors. The transitions are implemented as avi animations between slides if your video card didn't have OpenGL capabilities. Each transition comes with a neat. Wav sound, like the creaking doors transition that has really spooky creaking doors sounds. You can also choose which. Wav sound to use in a given transition.

Everything worked as advertised, and as advertised, the 3D video accelerator is a must. Renders without OpenGL take 20 to 70 seconds per transition, but fortunately you can select the resolution and frame rate and optimize these according to your need to save render time. Only one feature did not work right the first time: packing a presentation with the sounds and the 3DSPlayer executable. In fact I could not get the 3DSPlayer to run the packaged files or even plain Powerpoint 97 files.

The plug-in, once installed, can import more transitions, for instance, from the other CDROM volume(s) of transition effects. This program is another example of a program that wants a particular flavor of DirectX and works best without QuickTime for Windows also being installed.