Angle of Attack Training

[Eraser74 35]

Don´t know how you will be able to watch the whole training on one weekend but hey.Yeah, the video is delayed again. It was supposed to come out wednesday and now it looks like saturday. Excuses over excuses and for two months no new content to speak of.This project has really taken away the good reputation AOA had and the advertisment for the training doesn´t help, where it seems like the training is finished, which it is FAR from it. With this speed we will be waiting for videos in three years.As I said before, their finished stuff is absolutely amazing, but they sure went over their head with the NG training. They just couldn´t deliver with the original setup and now have to reorganize the whole team.My feelings for the product have become indifferent, I am not surprised anymore when there are no new videos, instead I am surprised when I find something new.Let´s wait and see if saturday there will be something, but somehow I don´t think so.

[TheDanger 182]

Webmaximus,Give them a month to release their new sections and then if if the excuses continue a trip to a solicitor for legal advice or reporting to trading standards may be advisable. Not sure how the law works internationally.I am glad I have not bought this as I too would be asking for a refund now.You should take screen captures of their replies and all of the forum posts of people discussing their concerns for future use.

Edited February 24, 2012 by graham3278

[Guest dlrk]

Give them a month to release their new sections and then if if the excuses continue a trip to a solicitor for legal advice or reporting to trading standards may be advisable. Not sure how the law works internationally..

They're offering refunds, so that would be rather dickish.

[TheDanger 182]

They're offering refunds, so that would be rather dickish.

Eh? Edited February 24, 2012 by graham3278

[pete_auau 1,159]

Webmaximus,Give them a month to release their new sections and then if if the excuses continue a trip to a solicitor for legal advice or reporting to trading standards may be advisable. Not sure how the law works internationally.I am glad I have not bought this as I too would be asking for a refund now.You should take screen captures of their replies and all of the forum posts of people discussing their concerns for future use.

How much solicitors cost nowdays sure more than the refund Edited February 24, 2012 by pete_auau

[ZKOKQ 984]

They're offering refunds, so that would be rather dickish.

Can you back that up ?

[roarkr 104]

Hi,Normally I don't get upset that easy , but AOAs PMDG B737 NGX training is FRAUD from end to end.I got a email from Chris Palmer today where he rejected my redund ticket in a very little respectful wayIt is not the money itself, it is the way they are marketing this product that upsets me the most.I believe this is an example of WORST kind in the category " sell the skin before the bear is shot" within the flightsim community.They haven't now after 7 months after starting selling the product found out how to "kill the bear or how to skin it"That the training package is complex I believe in full and that they work as hard as possible I also believe. But, now after soon 7 months since I was dumb enough to buy their product, they are complaining about lack of internal communication, lack of tools etc its to When will it be ready, only God nows, if ever.Shame on AOA and Chris Palmer. He and his company have lost all my respect as a professionals. This project is way out of control.rgs,Roar Kristensen

[ohsirus 241]

Did I just read that Nick no longer works at AoA? I saw a post, but it now appears gone.

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

Nick is going away to Spain. He'll be doing full time flight training there.

[Eraser74 35]

But Nick will stay in a consultation position and assist in groundwork.

[airwolfe 1]

It makes me wonder if the only department that is open at AOA is there accounting department (receivables anyway) ...I sorely regret buying the Captain's Package up front. The fact that they won't refund for this product is particularly troubling to me, it shows that they might not even have the money left to refund.

[Sekstifire 10]

So AoA is the AirSimmer of training videos?

[VLJ510 16]

I'm not completely upset or disappointed... yet and even what disappointment I have a bit rest on my shoulders.First I did not go all out and get the "Captains Package" too jump on the savings offered. Reason being was I was betting my money held in my pocket rather their bank account offered the real savings with what I knew with information AOA had given about their ambitious, product coverage, and depth. I'd knew this take some time along with what I knew about video production, not to mention fact checking and rechecking, along with proper & tho row investigation beforehand. So I just went with groundwork for now; so I'm not as invested as some here. But I too now am kinda like really! To be polite I'll just say I think a lot of this is a result of over ambition but know in the end it will be pulled off.Some take is that the PMDG provided manuals are more then enough and I agree 100%, if you like the plane and the level of simulation most here do you should enjoy the manuals and learning however. Heck it even showed in a emergency situation how to use the escape ropes in the cockpit. But in that want to learn more or do it better I find AOA helps and that just manual learning is bland and boring, even hard to fully comprehend first go around and why AOA is there to make one stay that much more in tuned to the lesson. So this is taste v.s taste talk really.In the end once deeper within production (plane flying) I'm sure most will be happy with the product we get and might even learn something not in the manuals witch some might have already as were not all on the same skill level. I hope two things, one AOA sees the need to set it up and two, we don't get too hard on them. However if you did go all out with the Captains Package and now after this long this is all we have and nowhere near the video showing flying or information over the elementary simmer level they should be able to refund to at least just groundwork for 'X" amount of time since that's all they've gotten and for AOA to say that at least them and/or their past outlook has not preformed as expected by us or even themselves speaking realistically. They should have to earn the money back as it was handed over on a unknown production timeline with a lot of speculation because they wrote, talked, and made it seam like once they had the plane these videos run like crap though a goose.

Edited February 24, 2012 by VLJ510

[Chris from Angle of Attack 7]

I owe you guys a decent explanation here, honest and open. First off, I don't frequent these forums as I busy myself with other things, most of which is making sure our end of things is taken care of first. So I apologize it's taken this long to come on this forum and chat with you guys about the issues at hand.One of the major issues facing us from the beginning is the amount of content that we've committed to on this 737NGX project. It's far beyond anything we've done before. It's the same amount of content that is in our AviatorPro product, for example, and that has been in the making for just under 2 years (with production standards much less than the fine, polished look of the NGX training).From the outset, it seems simple: produce a video, section by section, and release them as they come out, say, 1 a week or every few weeks.The NGX is the first project that has been produced in compartments. Nick does the script and voice over, Henry does the schematics, someone else does FSX footage, someone writes out the bullet points, and the video editor puts it altogether.This poses major challenges through communication and organization. And honestly, this is our biggest issue thus far. We just weren't a detailed, process driven business when we started this project. As a production company, we can basically run a 'factory' and set way of pumping out product.So, I want to go through somewhat of a timeline for you guys about how things have progressed to give current customers a recap, and give prospective customers an idea about what we've been doing to fix the issues. Keep in mind most of what I say here is in hindsight. It may seem as though I was ignoring issues at the time, but these are simply lessons we've learned and observations we've made over the course of this project.AugustThis was release month for the NGX. Much of our efforts were geared toward marketing a product that we had already been working on since January 2011. We were confident in our structure and plan, and ability to deliver. We had done so before with other products, one being the MD-11.The huge influx of customers and traffic basically crashed our site and we went through a tremendous amount of growth in a short period of time. We had to move to a dedicated server and make our CDN system more robust.All the while, any of the menu structure that wasn't already done had to be completed.We had just recently launched our new website, and it took some getting used to. But we eventually got everything fixed (with future fixes and UI improvements to come).SeptemberIt was immediately apparent through our inability to deliver a video a week that we were going to be facing many challenges. We went from 0 knots to about Mach speed in a matter of days, and we simply didn't have the structure to keep up with it.We released the lighting section just before September, which looked fantastic.October-NovemberThese were difficult months. We were really working hard to communicate as a team, hand off our assets, and get things finished in a timely manner. The lack of true structure and project management really hurt us. There weren't any checks and balances.Although we released the major of the remaining sections we've released in this timeframe, it was so stressful on our team because we A. didn't have a grasp on the scope of these large videos (30-60 minutes each section) B. communication was difficult on all the small details (schematics, text, voice overs, script, etc, etc) and C. we had a community base that wanted videos yesterday.DecemberAt the end of November, early December, I had our video editor taken out of the process. Things weren't working from a mere personality standpoint, let alone the ability to communicate well, deliver on time, and so on.There was such an abrupt end to the business relationship that I myself finished editing the GPWS section, which totals just under an hour of work. As an experienced video editor and motion graphics artist, I immediately saw just how difficult this part of the process was, but also a vast number of improvements we could make immediately.We used this new time to find a video editor and get a bit of a rest for the holidays, all of which we ran by our customers. December was a pretty dead month.JanuaryIn January, as we started to gear up with the newly hired video editor and a better idea of the work ahead of us, we started to release Flows videos. This gave us the chance to release some short videos while testing out the video editor to see how he performed. We've been pleased with his ability to produce things quickly and his communication skills; very important in this line of work.Those were released over a set amount of time, getting SOMETHING out the door while we prepared him for the heavy work ahead on GroundWork.FebruaryAt the very start of February I hired a full time project manager to achieve many things. Some of which are deadlines, objectives, and a schedule in which those are applied to. We have also started to have strict production timeframes for each step, meaning that we only get to create as much as we can in a certain amount of time. In other words, no 'open timeframe' to create a massive section we didn't have the time or resources to produce. We're still able to teach all we need to for those sections, of course. But there have to be limits.We also have procedures and checklists for each step. This ensures expectations and uniformity is achieved across all videos, and every one on the team knows what they should be doing, and how they should be doing it, at all times.Checklists allow for each team member to ensure they're handing off everything they need to so the next person down the line doesn't get held up by incomplete work.We've also started doing very detailed storyboarding, which means each frame of each video has a purpose, we know the assets required for that frame, who's in charge of it, and what is needed to get it done. Then, the video editor has a straight forward templete to work from, rather than getting a ton of assets he knows nothing about because he didn't produce them. Even if the video editor had a long conversation with those people that created them (what we did before) it's not as good as having a roadmap.With Nick's departure for flight school (something he has delayed for a long time in order to work on this NGX stuff) we have also had to find a new script writer and voice over artist.We already have both positions filled. The script writer is a very good friend of Nick's, in his same flight program, and they have spend the last month or so preparing for this time with face-to-face conversations about how Nick teaches the content. The voice over guy is rock solid, and will give us professional (we don't even consider ourselves professional) level voice overs in a 24 hour turn around, edited and ready for the video.These new production schedules take some time to spool up. Having the guys going from one way of production, to a completely new (yet more efficient) way of production is difficult from a physiological standpoint. Although they have the creative freedom they need to make awesome videos, there are a lot more rules and steps along the way now.We have many challenges ahead of us, that's for sure. We have a product that is very expensive to produce, and a tarnished reputation because of this massive project that blindsided us.We're committed to doing whatever it takes to get these things fixed, many of which we've shared on our website directly with our customers via weekly 737 progress updates.Regarding refunds, we've had several people over the last few days request refunds from us after about 6 months, outside of our 30 Day Refund timeframe. We have certainly done refunds outside this timeframe before, and we still do on a case by case basis. However, what sparked these few people to request a refund is because we said we'd most likely have a video out Wednesday, and when that didn't happen, some threw their arms in the air.We believe we're fixing most of the issues facing this project right now, and we don't see any point in breaking our own policies in mass form right when things are finally going to start getting better.I've been kind and forthcoming about these refunds, and believe me, we've had a lot of people ask for them and get them, especially initially.This entire project is obviously a sensitive subject for people. I want to be clear that we aren't putting up the white flag of surrender. We're working smarter (not harder- we were already working hard enough) to get the issues fixed and get a timely release schedule going. Besides, frequent releases reflect on the quality of the product.I'm optimistic about this projects turnaround because of the structure we've finally put in place that should have been there in the first place.I am going to subscribe to this thread and answer question directly from here on out. I ask that we keep things respectful as that can often be forgotten on the internet, especially on forums.We're here, we're not going anywhere, and we're working hard. Let's carry on the conversation and get some more videos out!

[MrPlaneDriver 41]

Hey, Chris!Thanks for coming over and giving a heads-up on what's going on. I really appreciate it. I've been a customer of the NGX Training from day 1 and, although I have to admit I was not happy with the dealys, I still have confidence that you are able to work out the issues and get back on track somehow, based on what I've seen on the MD-11 Training, continuing to deliver the great videos you do.After this post of yours I could actually have a clue of how big the problems were, and it's nice to have an idea of what you're facing and how you're working them out, maybe even compromising your real life commitments.I'd like you to know that I fully support your work and, as I said before, I have confidence on what you're doing.Cheers!

Edited February 25, 2012 by barfra1995