I have attended many academies (flight, driving, cooking, art, woodland survival, woodworking, metal working, writing, etc.) and every one of them involves a “live” instructor who demonstrates skills and evaluates the student in real time.
Your “academy” is the equivalent of what EXPERIENCED aviators use, a “ground examiner” to get type rated in a new aircraft like a single seat warbird, etc. It examines results AFTER a pilot learns, but it isn’t “training” anyone.
A virtual instructor has been part of MS flight simulators since version 5.1, and is part of many other third party flight training softwares. I realize your program is “free” (supported by promoting new navigraph subscriptions), but it really is half of a process, and far, far from how real world flight training is conducted.
I understand that an in-cockpit instructor is a very expensive, much higher development level of software, but the customer’s needs are the customer’s needs. Charge for it as a premium version if you must.
UPDATE: Yeah, after completing the first few missions, I find that just having the “results analysis” on the academy webpage is wholly inadequate. “Hey you were off in heading here, speed there, bank angle there, etc.” is just an empty review. The critical element missing DURING the flight lessons is an instructor going, “you need to add power here, you need to trim for speed at this point, you’re watching speed too much here, watch it less and focus on bank angle, etc.”
This feedback is the critical live element that transfers the instructor’s knowlege and experience to the student. Without it, it’s like teaching someone to drive a car by letting them go out alone in traffic to collide with things until their accident ratio goes down.
The other problem is that the student’s corrections MAY be in error or dangerous even if they fulfill the “requirements”. The student may be risking stalls with uncoordinated rudder just to push the nose into a “better” position, they may be flying a best climb when they need best rate, etc. - This integration of the WHOLE flying activity cannot be evaluated or tested by raw data, it must be checked by an instructor.
I’m amazed that with the current wave of A.I. that you didn’t incorporate some intelligence into your “academy’. The concept is a great “review” for experienced pilots, but only a small part of training new pilots. You touted having great flight instuctors involved, but they aren’t doing any actual “instruction”, just making videos as on a million online flight training channels.
Anyway, your start is a nice tool, but it needs some serious horsepower added to it to be a “flight academy”.