Chris from Angle of Attack

Hey all, I'm glad the majority of you are finding the training useful. Producing a course of that size at the time was very difficult to do. Both our 737 and 777 courses are quite in depth and offer a one-stop-shop for most of the knowledge you'll need flying the aircraft. Of course, you can go out and try and get what you want from Youtube. There is some pretty good stuff out there- even I admit it. That said, it's not all-in-one place, and not all of it is professionally produced. In other words, to be able to find everything is one spot, and not have to keep searching around, is one of the highest values of these packages. Also, you're learning from actual pilots when you're consuming our content- not flight simmers who got their knowledge from someone else. Too often I've found that Youtubers are good at some things, but leave me baffled at others. BTW, Jason Sokoloff of AOA has been continually producing content for the 737 for a few years now. 737 LineWork has over 55 episodes now, packed full over very, very advanced techniques. We're talking hundreds of hours of additional content here. If you haven't checked it out, it's worth doing so! He regularly releases updates to that course. If you guys have an additional questions, feel free to reach out to me directly at [email protected] and I'd like to answer any questions you may have. We know that with some effort and focus, using our courses can transform the way you fly simulated airliners. Throttle On!

Thanks a million, man! I really appreciate that. Big thanks! Really hope you get to enjoy that beautiful bird. Don't forget, you can make it less daunting for yourself by getting our Aviator90 series.

Michael, you can contact support. You'll be taken care of. Doesn't help to say it here when we're really the people that can help you. We do appreciate your business, and we always recognize your name when it comes up. We don't do had products. It's a logistical nightmare, and just doesn't work out that great. Our company is a bit too small to be doing that. The demand for it just isn't as high as you'd think, so we put our effort into things online. Yes. It's honestly a lot of getting riled up for nothing, if you ask me. Yeah, whatever. You're making this into a much bigger deal than it is. Had you read what I wrote earlier about our policies and why, you'd see that we're not pulling moves like AT&T to increase our margins. This is something we HAVE to do to survive. It's fun to come and rail on FS Companies, as for some reason we seem big and bad. I can tell you that most FS Companies aren't big, or bad, and the small things matter. This isn't something we've wanted to do. It's something we HAVE to do. Yeah, we're not EA... You get it! Thanks!

No, actually, it's free. Completely free. I have thousands of people watching these videos that don't pay a dime. And I love it! Because of a reason you suggested "My blog is not a lesson in doing things right. It is the frustration of a newbie trying to figure out the basics. When I look back at it now, it is actually rather embarrassing. There simply was a lot of stuff I did not know, and more experienced flight simmers never thought were important enough to mention. Of course, these are the things which are critical to understand (like the 250 speed limit below 10,000 feet). One of the biggest problems with people who have been doing this for a while is they overcomplicate things. Very few of them know how to get to the point, how to strip out the extraneous garbage and just tell you what you need to know to get started. At the same time, there is a tendency to leave out important details, because, for them, those details are so routine as to seem unimportant. Many of these people thrive on complexity and making things as difficult as possible. The end result is they end up confusing people." Doing an ILS to begin with is really, really overcomplicating things. An ILS is an advanced maneuver taught to people that are already competent in landing the aircraft visually. And ILS does NOT take you all the way to the ground, so how are you going to land in those last few hundred feet? Listen, I really appreciate you trying to help this guy out, but you're being super confusing and contradicting. I want other people to jump in here and back me up, because this is borderline ridiculous to say you can't land without an ILS. I can tell you aren't a real pilot, but I can tell you've learned a thing or two. If it were me, I would want to be starting out with the basics. ILS is NOT part of the basics. I would also want to be learning from actual pilots. It's up for other people to decide, but it's clear where the real experience is here. And I think that's who most people want to learn from, bypassing years of confusion.

This is totally inaccurate. We have a free course called Aviator90 that is absolutely perfect for you, and goes through all the basics of flying in a video course. 45 videos, all taught by real pilots (mostly me). Come on over, you have nothing to lose. www.Aviator90.com Checkout Aviator90. You'll love it. I would wait on this stuff. You've got to learn to land and take off first, do maneuvers, and so on. ILS is actually quite advanced, and you need a good grasp of the machine to do simple things like descend on glideslope.

Yup! It's available. Both download links should work.

I would go ahead and look again. www.777Training.com is vague, but you aren't actually entering card information there. The checkout pages themselves are incredibly clear as to what you get, how it's delivered, and so on, don't to how many minutes of video you get. So I invite you to look at the bullet points again. It's very, very clear. Certainly not as realistic, though. But it's great.

I don't have any plans on changing the way this works. It works quite well. If people aren't serious about the product at all, then it's probably not going to work out anyway. This isn't a SaaS where you get a certain amount for free, forever. Like Dropbox and 2GB. It's a full product that gives you a glimpse into the training. I've had to enter my card details plenty of times before hand, knowing that if I didn't like the trial, then I needed to manually back out. This is the case for many of the services we pay for to run the business. Understood. We'll be enabling this in the future. It's worked out well for 777. But in order to do so, we'll need to code things up a bit different and that'll take a bit of time.

For anything that isn't 'buy now', so basically all the trials, PayPal is not currently available. We will be turning on this functionality for a 'buy now' options with the NGX here in the near future. But if you jump in the trial, then contact support, we can basically eliminate the trial and get you started. Can I give you a hug?... THANK YOU! We believe it's a MUCH easier way for everyone. Intense, huh? To be 100% honest, we realized that we had a reputation to repair. We really got our act together with the 737 eventually, but it was too late for the community to see that. Our team is truly impressive. And yes, 100% of the training is done and complete in GroundWork, and the rest of FlightWork is already being worked on. Really appreciate your business, Gavin. Thanks for all your support.

Thank you! We've put a lot of money, time and effort into this website. We've been working on it since may. It's SO much easier for customers to use, and to take care of themselves and their account. And it's so much easier to get into the training. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. At all. Almost any website you use as a service will take a credit card up front for you to get in the trial. You aren't charged, you can cancel any time, and there's really no risk. We don't see the issue here at all. There's honestly no risk in your corner, yet there is STILL cost in our corner if you decide to bug out. We're confident that you'll really enjoy the training once you're in, which is why we offer the trial.

You get several hours of training by enrolling in the trial. There is a preview video at www.777Training.com, although it's not live for all viewers, just half of them. (we are changing that) Your card isn't actually charged when you do a trial. You can cancel any time, and you are not charged at all. So honestly, theres's really zero risk. This is how our system work, and it works quite well. Much different than it had worked in the past. Glad to see the people are recognizing we worked our butts off to release this training in full. Nick still has some work to do in FlightWork, but that's a done deal. GroundWork 100% done on day 1 is what we've been shooting for all along this past year. And although we weren't able to hit day 1 (we didn't get a copy of the 777 early enough, darn!) we did get AWFULLY close. Really proud of our team for all they've done to make that happen. Thanks, Robert! It's worth noting at this point that our new streaming system actually detects your steam, and delivers the top quality video available. It also makes sure that your video goes un-interrupted. How are we a rogue developer? I have a feeling you're just making noise right now. We haven't screwed our previous customers. They got full access to their downloads (those stragglers are being taken care of by support) and no one is going without. Additionally, those members still have full access to streaming versions in the infinite future. So I find it hard to see how we're screwing our customers when A. we've given them (are giving them) what we promised and B. we're trying to stay in business. I don't know how hard understand how massive of a library this much video is, but it is a tremendous amount of data, and it's sucking us dry. There's nothing else to be said (although I'm sure I'll have to). This is not something I WANT to do, but something we HAVE to do. I'd rather just keep it simple and not have to be writing this, believe me. AND We made our 777 Training a lower cost so those that DID want to get the downloads could add them on, and not be any poorer for it compared to other products. And those that don't need downloads don't get charged for it. It goes both ways. It's still not cheaper. You're talking about DVD production houses that require a thousand copies minimum, at a premium. On top of that, we'd then be in the distribution business, which takes a completely different business model. We've done DVDs in the past. That's how we started out. Those were the good old days. However, it's not the way to go anymore. Everything is going digital, and we cannot shoulder THAT burden either. We decided to go all digital for our customers- Instant Access, No Broken Shipments, etc. Good thought, though.

First off, I want to start off by saying that I haven't read through all the comments. I'm sure that many of the questions and comments are things I have directly answered for our customers that have reached out to us over the last week. We've gone through a lot of support tickets, a lot of comments on the blog, and a number of other sources as well. Before any of you jump to any further conclusions about the downloads, I offer you our official support article on this subject: http://support.flyaoamedia.com/customer/portal/articles/1291842-unlock-downloads-and-paying-for-downloads Now that you've read that, and potentially put some of the rumors to rest, let me tell you with my own words what is going on here. We have a MASSIVE offering with our training packages. Our 737 Training is just under 35 hours (34 hours and 58 minutes, to be exact... not including LineWork). You can imagine that HD video of that size is quite a large, large set of data. Generally speaking, HD video runs about 1GB per hour. Now knowing that our product(s) are some of the largest, if not the largest, in flight simulation in relation to file size, you can see that AOA has a very unique challenge that not a lot of other companies have. We are not a large publishing house like FTX, are are not Flight 1 or Aerosoft or even a Flight Sim Store. We're a fairly small company, a niche of a niche, and costs are super, super important for us to watch. Recently I enabled a new analytics tool that showed me some shocking data- customers are coming back year after year, and taking their training again. At first my reaction was, 'This is really great! We'd love to have them back!'. But then I realized that our downloads were open, forever and for always, to our customers. My foresight at the time of offering these downloads didn't allow me to see that I'd be constantly devaluing our company, and continually running up the cost-per-unit. Already the costs for downloads were high, but we wanted to offer an experience that anyone could enjoy. So we did- without giving a second thought to the data costs. However, as time has gone on, and we've learned more about how our business runs, and how to stay profitable and survive, we have had to make some tough choices, and get real about this downloads situation. Our plan with the new website was to offer these downloads for customers that have purchased within the previous 6 months. Customers that were outside the 6 months we assumed had already downloaded their files, and wouldn't need to be downloading again anyway. Quickly we learned that wasn't the case, and customers that bought the 737 Training when it first came out still needed to finish downloading their training. Very soon after that, we contacted all past package owners, and let them in to get the downloads for free. If Angle of Attack is to stay alive and vibrant, we simply cannot run up the costs, and continually devalue our company because trainees want to take part in the training every year. Our streaming versions remain 100% open and free for always. Streaming costs, unlike downloads, are a completely different thing. We've heard people say, "these are the same videos. Why is streaming any different than downloads?" From a data delivery stand point, streaming is completely different than downloads. We pay for our streaming services on a per-view/storage size basis. We pay for downloads on a byte-for-byte basis. Streaming one of our videos is simply one less time we can serve that video, with the allotted views we have. Serving a download is byte-for-byte cost. It would be nice if we could offer downloads straight from our servers. However, this would be unrealistic because of the international nature of this hobby, and the world-wide customers we have. Not only would our servers get slammed and make the website unusable, but it would mean that people that are far away from that server location would experience painfully slow downloads. Therefore, we have to serve our downloads on a content delivery network, or CDN. A CDN is a worldwide network of servers that act as delivery points for our content. That means that when you request to download a video, you're getting it from down the street, and not from a server across the world. The speeds are much faster, and you can get to your training faster. CDN services, however, are not free. You can imagine that a company running such a large network of servers has to charge something reasonable for this service. And although the prices per GB are worth it, it's still a lot of money when added up over the course of a training package, and multiplied by the number of users taking part in that training. As far as our obligations to past customers, we have given them what they asked for. They have their downloads. Apart from a few minor issues we are chasing down with our current website (I saw some of you were complaining about them) we have given access to all of those videos. If you read the article above, you will have seen several key points. 1, the videos are available always on streaming. 2, follow files, diagrams, transcripts and other supporting documents will forever be free. 3, past customers and new customers that were promised the downloads have been offered or are getting the downloads. For those that have contacted our support, they have seen swift support regardless of the influx of tickets we've had. They have also seen a lot of the issues with some of the files to be fixed. We have a large content library to manage, and so the help from the community letting us know where things are amiss has been incredibly helpful. If you have an issue with the new website, or with the downloads, or with anything else, you're welcome to write our support. We're quite helpful, reasonable, and fast to get to you. However, by complaining about it here, it does nothing. We are busy supporting people that want to be helped, and are reaching out. Our team doesn't have the time to scour the forums and make sure that everyone is getting what they need. We recognize that there have been issues getting started with the new website, and we apologize for that. We completely changed out website because it was not user friendly before, and simply caused way too many issues. Moving to a new system means users having to learn a new system too, so we thank you for your patience. At the end of the day, you're going to find your training easier than ever before to learn and take part in. This transition is a little difficult, but for those who have been able to get their issues fixed, it's the best experience they've had so far at Angle of Attack. We're excited for the up and coming 777 Training release. In the meantime, we look forward to ironing out the final wrinkles in the system so you all can get your downloads. Again, if you have anything you need, or trouble accessing the website, please come get a hold of us and we will help you. Thank you to all of you for your business, but most of all your morale support. It's awfully challenging in this market, but we feel our new way forward will be better and more rewarding for you as a customer. We can't wait for you to see that, and experience that. Until then, Throttle On!

I believe you're facing an anti-piracy issue here. Not accusing you of anything, but you need to take this directly to PMDG support if you have a legit copy.

Read your whole post, but only wanted to quote this particular part. Thanks so much! You're right- the single pilot environment is extremely difficult. I've mentioned several times that I have to do that, film, keep the production value up, teach, and FLY. It's actually too much, and not very safe. But it's what we have to do. I'm really glad that you enjoy our live training style. I think it's what we're going to be doing in the future, albeit, highly improved from what we're doing now. And honestly, I think we have great quality now. I just want to always be doing better. Thanks again for your wonderful words and support! I'm glad everyone is enjoying Flight #5. The first 4 flights were meant to be quite basic yet thorough. You're out of the basics now. It's time to put the big boy pants on!

He does a fantastic job, huh?! Thanks for the compliment here. I really do want to change AOA for the better, and I see myself as a humble person that is willing to change and improve continually. I'm attaching an example of GroundWork, so you can see it in action yourself. Jump forward to about 3:20 to see some of the more advanced animations and graphics we provide. I purposely chose what can often be a BORING section, to show you how interesting it can be with our tools and production quality.

Putting a comment in the video is still an option, actually. We have the ability to do things like that. I explained this in the other reply I had for you, Jordan. At least this particular mistake. If you purchased that long ago, I can see the reason for the denial. That was quite a long time outside the 30 Days. We may extend our policy on that, though. I'll have a think about it. We've got to keep this stuff within reason. Very, very few FS companies do refunds. That fact that we do them at all (after you've had a chance to enjoy and download the material) is telling on how we view our customer relationships for the long term. We just think there should be some sort of middle ground, otherwise we'd get hosed. A ton of assumptions here, like we didn't read the manuals. For all (not just Jordan) we do offer a professional solution. I've laid out the scope of our training so far, and also the fact that we do things others can't, and things manuals can't. We have a LOT of material, and it's very, very professional in terms of what is taught (and the accuracy) and the actual production quality. Professionalism is not perfection. We offer a very professional package with this training, and what this entire thread is about is a few minor mistakes that were made in the nearly 30 hours of training we've done. You're completely right. It totally don't know everything. There's a TON I don't know. This is what I love about aviation; there's always something new and exciting to learn, if not simply refine or expound. Bahaha! Wouldn't we all. Only so much can fit upstairs. It's that age-old PMS- Pilot Memory Syndrome.

Now worries, my friend. I hope you're enjoying it so far. I think the VAST majority of people REALLY enjoy this training. There are different levels of simmers out there, and therefore different expectations. The expectations of a beginner aren't the same as a 12 year veteren. We have to find some middle ground to build everyone up in the same way, offer value, etc. These 12 year vets are about to get the crap kicked out of them in the flights Jason does. Flight #5 is now released, and will challenge any pilot. Hey Geoff, Thanks for the encouragement, and the great reply. Much appreciated. You have been a voice of reason in this post, and I really appreciate that. It's often easy to jump to conclusions, but you've really wanted to get the facts straight. Thanks for that! First of all, I didn't know that's what our forum said. Can you tell me exactly where you found that? We're trying to accomplish something in those words, but it could be said in a much better way. First, we want to help people with their issues. We do not actively monitor every post. We do however monitor tickets. What we want to avoid is people posting issues there, and then getting upset because we're not responding, and then getting venomous about it. We'd rather they come to us for support. Anyhow, that needs changing. As far as the selected quote above, you're right. We have quality assurance on our GroundWork stuff, but it's difficult to get it on our FlightWork stuff. Especially to find people that are objective about it, and know that there are other concerns than just perfect switch position. That, if we HAVE to redo something, it's going to cost a whole lot of money, take a lot of time, etc. If it passes all those tests, then yes, it will be redone. Which is why Flight #4 may get redone for FlightWork. We'll see with the reaction on this survey, though. It's impossible to do something like this in an afternoon, and that's why I'm 'defensive'. There's a disconnect and a lack of understanding with many people (I don't fault them) on how much work goes into creating videos. With GroundWork, people expected basically one every day. The level at which we do this is NOT like a Youtube video that's just thrown together. We have many graphic assets that go along with what we do, and also a lesson that fits into an overall course and structure. Things like the iPad on the screen are not that easy to do. It's a completely separate layer and video, it has to be synced up, cut, etc, etc. Apart from that, these lessons will be seen by thousands of people. So there's the stress of doing it right. And the flights are never flown right the first time. I have to redo them to get them right. So no, they aren't just thrown together. There are many, many hours both pre, present and post production that are spent tweaking and refining these videos. Once it's done, then it goes to rendering and publishing, which takes hours itself as well. I'll defend that position, because not many people understand that. Yes, your tone is reasonable. Thank you. Each mistake I've made, I've generally had a chance to correct it. When you enter V2 (which is the correct setting), it still jumps to V2+20 after takeoff. That was the part I had confused. It was corrected for the remaining 3 flights. And I want to point out that you're picking out one thing in 4 hours of footage to critique. The information in that first flight was incredibly in depth. We sat on the ground pouring over every part of the cockpit, talking about the practical application, for nearly 3 of those hours. I can only assume that because you hadn't pointed anything out there, that it's nearly flawless. Flawless, and, impractical. Real crews know how to do that stuff, so that's why in the later flights we pick up the pace, and start barreling through. What has me a bit tweaked about all this is that there are a few minor errors that are being pointed out, almost all of which I've corrected. Someone else mentioned Anti-Ice. I explained that in depth several times. The simulator does NOT act the same as real world. In the real world you have visual indications of ice, and you can blast off the wing ice in 1 minute cycles. In the simulator, you still get the icing consequences, without the visual cues. It's a silent killer. So our SIMULATOR procedure is different than the real world procedure. I know and recognize this. (By the way, if you take a fuel injected single engine aircraft through icing conditions in FS, and you don't have carb heat on (yes, it doesn't have a carburetor) you're going to fall out of the sky.) Just an example of things we have to do different. You guys are welcome to run icing cycles as they do in the real world. But it's going to come back to bite you eventually. Our anti-ice procedures (especially engine) are totally correct. I studied and studied that topic, and I'm confident in our methods. We have to tweak wing ice, but there you go. Thanks again. This is really good feedback. And I sort of agree. I think I could really pick up the energy as I teach. This is something I will certainly be working on. Thanks! Bartlomiej, Thanks! You nailed it. Our 747 Training is nowhere NEAR as complex as this 737 Training. The 747 Training is about 8 and a half hours long if my memory serves me right. That includes all of the systems, procedures, and the flight we do. 737... GroundWork alone is 20 lessons, and 9 and a half hours. I haven't even started to tally FlightWork, but lets see... 4 hours, flight 1, 2.5 flight 2, 2 hours flight 3, 2.5 Flight 4, flight 5 is 4.5, with a current total of 15.5 hours Flight Training. Pretty crazy. I'd say we've gone beyond the 'just beginners' and we're into a whole different area now. I don't think you can learn to fly from manuals. I just don't believe it. It doesn't make any common sense to me. Videos are the second greatest thing we can do apart from teaching 1-on-1. Highly visual, you get to SEE what to do, and get all the others cues, not just the manuals stuff. Anyway, thanks!

And you'll get one. This is where I'm going to challenge you. Not every flight has been riddled with basic errors. Riddled would say they are everywhere. They aren't everywhere. You're pointing out one or two things in a sea of hundreds of things that were done correctly, and saying the entire video is flawed as a result. I realize you're not happy, but we have to be fair. There are minor things here and there, yes. I've admitted them, learned from them, and so have the rest of you. Our videos and our courses are extremely professional, and they are something that cannot be found anywhere else, unless you want to pay hundreds of dollars for a mediocre groundschool course, or tens of thousands for a flight simulator checkout. We don't promise perfection. Perfection and professionalism are completely different things. And I stand by the fact that our training is as professional as we advertise. If you expect perfection, that is something we never sold to you. If you expect to fly your simulations to a professional level, then that IS what we have advertised, and that is what we deliver, and continue to deliver, not only through our videos but in the way we handle our community. We are here to improve and grow, just as you are. We cannot improve if we're already perfect. I completely and totally disagree, respectfully, with everything you've said here. Let me pick it apart and tell you why. "They had a lot of excuses but they constantly missed expected delivery dates and still have a way to go with the flightwork and linework sections." We haven't made excuses. We've given you real reasons that we've followed up on time and time again, we've had an open voice, and an open conversation about it. These videos are extremely difficult to produce to the level that we do, and at the price we do. We've been forthcoming, and I've shared many details about our challenges, the reasons why we were struggling, and so on. I've also shared our triumphs. But that doesn't matter much for someone with an already sour taste in their mouth. "They seem to treat this more like a freeware project rather than something that customers are paying good money for. " Now this I really don't understand. Each video we produce takes a tremendous amount of time. And at the frequency, and the amount we produce, there is no possible way that we could do all that being freeware. This is a full time job for many people on our staff. Overgeneralizing based on a few mistakes is offensive and wrong. Our team, and myself, work incredibly hard to produce high quality training- and a lot of it! No freeware outfit can do what we do. Or even come close. Respectfully, you aren't our customer type then. People that want our products are people that realize that pilots don't fly an aircraft like 737's by reading manuals alone, and people that find it much easy to see-and-do than read-and-do. It's not done that way in the real world, and you can't expect real and accurate results that way. This goes to the core of what we believe: You can't learn to fly with manuals. Some of what I explained above will answer to the 777 competitions, but I want to talk about the 'rushed' and 'sloppy' you're referring to. In the past, AOA customers have become reliant on completely scripted and very structured flights. This doesn't allow us to have ANYTHING variable. Weather has to be perfect, saved, and flown the same way. The aircraft and all procedures have to act the exact same way, almost down to the second. And each and every word has to match what is going on. (Flight #1 in FlightWork is 90% this way. So you can see the difference. Yes, MUCH more structured, but also unrealistic) With this FlightWork, we really wanted to do it realistically. Pilots NEVER knows exactly what's going to happen, so why should we? Sure, we had an idea of what we wanted to teach during those lessons, which fit into our routes. But we wanted this to be much more realistic, because flying a flight in a scripted manner is completely and totally unrealistic. We figured that the mistakes, WHEN they came (and hopefully minor) would be overlooked for the fact that this was done live. It may seem more sloppy, and the narration is different, because it's LIVE. I'm flying and doing the voice over at the same time. Not flying the flight, and then doing the voice over later. I hope that sheds some light on that. 1)Yeah, I'm human. I do the lesson WHILE I'm flying, and doing things right can be stressful at times. I didn't feel that stressed, though. I apologize for have less pleasantries in return for a realistic and live flight. That's not sarcasm. Just saying, if that's something that's lacking, sorry about that. I'll work on putting on my 'happy face'. 2)This actually was the largest mistake I made, and a dumb one. You can bet you guys will never be doing that! But I actually didn't enter +57, I entered +157. If you enter a number (two digit) in that field, it'll automatically be a negative number. Because it wasn't anywhere close to the range it needed to be, it entered it at as positive. I need to review this in the video. From what I was told, I entered a 1 as well, for whatever reason. (Believe me, I'm not that stupid. I know better) 3)It was a bug in the software. And checklists aren't Do-lists, they are CHECK lists. Items are checked after they're already done. If you aren't doing items on the checklists by memory first, and checking them second, you're not getting the point and you're not doing it as real crews do it. Right, I'd like to see you try that. The fact that the time of these flights can't even be fit in the waking hours of one day is pretty telling. You obviously have no experience with making videos. No offense, but it's ignorant to say something like that when you don't have a clue what goes into it. Last year meaning the saved flight files were at the end of December, and the other flights were done in January, and released in February. Just wanted to clear up that is wasn't a YEAR between flights. That's why your posts are getting deleted on AOA. What's the point of even saying anything? I'm starting to think your username has something to do with THIS DEFINITION of flaming. Pretty sure you're aware of that, and it's simply part of your online character. If I have the choice, and I see it effect my community enough, I will delete your comments from AOA as a result. People are there to learn, not read stuff like that. You can go to Youtube and get inaccurate information, or you can go get a real type rating. Those are your choices. We'd love to have you onboard! I promise things are not as extreme as some of these fellows are making it out to be. We have an incredible product you'd enjoy, and would find value in. A few points here, thanks for the post. First, we do correct stuff when needed. And we are seriously considering correcting some of these issues that people can't seem to look past. We don't see it as that big of a deal, as things happen to even real crews. But we'll correct them if needed. Second, in terms of not waiting for PMDG to release the aircraft, that's exactly what we've done with 777. Granted we can't fly the thing, but we sure can get ahead in a lot of ways! I can tell you right now that you guys are going to be blown away at the turn around we've had from 737 to 777. You're going to be surprised what we have to offer on release day. And how complete it'll be. Conclusion Wow, this was a long one! I hope I did a bit of a justice with a lot of these, and explained more what's going on. I will be monitoring this thread now for follow up comments and questions. vvvvvv PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE vvvvvvv Fill out THIS SURVEY. It'll help us tremendously in determining overall feedback from the community on our FlightWork line of products, so we can improve now and for the future. It'd really help us out a ton! Thanks so much, again, for all your support. It's much appreciated. We look forward to many wonderful days of flying ahead. Throttle On! Chris Palmer Owner/Founder Angle of Attack

Hey all! I suppose it's about time I jump in here and give my two cents, shed some light on what's going on, and so on. I want to thank all of you who support AOA and continue to support AOA in our effort to offer Simulations best training. Our job and mission is a big one. And we certainly couldn't do it without your support, feedback, and often even patience. I'd like to clear up before I get started in direct responses a few things I think are important to keep in mind. First, contrary to popular belief, I'm a real person. Like you, I have dreams and aspirations. Like you, I have struggles and hardships. Like you, I work hard and do my best with what I have. I by no means accept that I am perfect in any sense of the imagination. I have my limitations, but also my strengths; like you. Next, I work very hard on AOA. I started this company in 2005 with the Level-D 767 company, and have somehow (by the grace of God!) I've survived and at times thrived in this industry. I'd imagine that this work is like any industry, with challenges with customer relationships, culture, product quality, politics in the industry, costs, cashflow, and so on. In other words, there is a lot more than meets the eye than a few videos (that is the topic of the discussion) and I hope that through my comments, you all can see that I'm a guy a lot like you: I love aviation, I love simulation, and I'm a bit of a computer nerd. So, here goes my response. Some are just point clarifications and information, some I will challenge you, some I will give praise, some I will verify, etc, etc. This is long, so if you're interested, and you'd like another side to the story, please read. I've also created THIS SURVEY that you can fill out at the end, or now, or whenever. We take customer feedback very seriously, and I will be reading the responses myself to better direct our efforts now and for the future. Here we go... We actually have a 30 Day Return Policy, but we are also reasonable beyond that. Get with our support team and we'll talk. We're pretty easy going as far as this is concerned, and we really want our customers to be satisfied and happy. As I noted on our website, I deleted your comment because you were being unreasonable, and regardless of my attempts to engage you and talk about it, you continued to go on and on. IT wasn't getting anywhere. Reserve fuel entry is supposed to be entered the way we showed you in the last several flights. Some other airlines do it differently. Reserve fuel should be the fuel remaining at the field upon landing (which is on the paperwork). I will of course verify this information, and make sure it's correct. First of all, Horani, sorry for your frustrations here. I also appreciate your new and easier tone here. Thanks for that. I want to talk about this departure. It's true that at times in a simulator we can face situations like I faced on this departure where things simply don't work the way they should, for whatever reason. The thing we have to keep in mind is that the systems modeled by PMDG, and then coupled with systems like the weather engine and the navdata, can have minor and major hiccups. On my flight, for whatever reason, I had a major hiccup in this system. This happens in a simulator because the redundancy is just not the same as it would be in the real aircraft. The level of data, and the fidelity, just isn't as robust as what real airlines pay crazy amounts of money to have. I'm not an idiot. I know this departure was pretty bad. I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to teach you all this exact lesson: that things do happen, and you have to know what to do- because when you're in there air, it's time to make the decisions you need to in order for a safe flight. The autopilot and FMS went completely wacko on me. I've seen those 'turns' we saw in the flight path iron themselves out as you reach a prior leg, or something of that nature. Most of the time it works itself out, and rarely does the aircraft take over like that. As a pilot, we all have to intervene if we know something isn't right. For whatever reason, that departure was not right, so I had to do the best I could with what was being thrown at me at the time. The setup was solid, the route was set, and I do not believe that should have happened. My attempt to teach a valuable lesson that stuff can happen, seems to have bitten me back. One thing I've REALLY tried to hammer across in FlightWork that is NOT going over well with our viewers (I will be investigating why) is the fact that things do not ALWAYS go according to plan. In fact, they rarely do. We can send you perfect videos. We've done it in the past. But to be honest, for every perfect flight you see from us (MD-11 for example) are 20-30 takes that you DONT see, where there are minor errors in the simulator, or freak-outs like that. In the 737 Training, because we are doing so many flights, we thought, "Why not teach these guys how it's really done? We'll record and fly live, things will be unscripted, and we'll fly as real pilots do". That doesn't seem to be coming across very well. In my defense: This departure, and something in the computer, was completely messed up and I had to take immediate corrective action. Not in my defense: I could have taken over early, monitored the expected conditions better, and so on. I have accountability. But there ARE reasons I left the mistakes. Reasons that are for teaching purposes in addition to the other reasons above. I did the TURIL 5 E as well, from what I remember. (I haven't reviewed it again to check) Everything from the FMS looked good in my mind (other than the loop, that I've often seen in FS, which seems to iron itself most of the time. ) Actually, I have nothing to do with the 777 Production. I will be doing FlightWork, but we aren't in a position to work on that yet in 777. 737 FlightWork is completely separate from concerns of 777. So us posting about 777 isn't choosing one thing over another. It's that 777 and 737 have separate production teams. I've hashed this out in several places, including here on Avsim. The comment above alluded to it, but the crux of it all is that our 737 FlightWork team, and our 777 Team, are separate. It's not even that one COULD work on the other. The 777 GroundWork team is essentially working on 777 GroundWork. Their skillset is specific to that product, not FlightWork. FlightWork takes a completely different production style. I use GroundWork Team people when and where I can, if they're needed. But the truth is, they just don't have the kind of impact on FlightWork that they do on GroundWork, because of how those products are produced. (Continued in next post)

He does some really great stuff, and it's cool to see his inside knowledge. It's still not as complete and comprehensive as our training, though, with all of the systems knowledge, then the flight knowledge, etc. Still great, don't get me wrong.

Personally, I don't know of any. It's such a rare aircraft that it's just not mainstream enough to really be worth someones time. It's such a shame, because it's a great airplane.

Totally correct! This manual has more information than you'd ever need for simulator. But you can basically do anything in the manual in the simulator, which is a huge tribute to PMDG. Although, it is quite a boring read at times, it's really solid stuff. They look awesome on the iPad, I tell you what! Just really, really impressive. Especially if you have a newer generation with a retina display. Can't wait to have you onboard!

This is just one of many examples: I was watching a Youtube video the other day and the guy had started his engines at the gate before even doing the FMC setup. I'm sorry, that is completely incorrect. This happens all the time. The information is rarely accurate, and not of very high quality. Anyone can make a video sharing what they know. But to make a very high quality video, with verified and solid information, that's a completely different story.

We'd love to have you on board with us. If manuals and text training are your thing, then go for the free stuff. If video training is your thing, I'd suggest you check us out. You won't be getting accurate information from Youtube. Good luck in your endeavor!

HDEv2? I just like to keep things simple with ActiveSky. They aren't perfect, but it works well. I wouldn't recommend FEX for weather generation. If you're talking about cloud generator in the sense of building cloud layers, then that'll work. But if you're looking for weather textures, get REX.