(NOTE: I had no clue what board would best suit this thread, so I decided to toss it in here. Hopefully, it fits.)
With how out-of-left-field that title may sound to most of you reading, I feel like I should re-introduce myself to the forums before proceeding any further. So, with that:
Hello! I'm HawkbitAlpha (also known as Wedge, or, uh, His Wedgeness, or, uh, Wedger, or El Wedgerino if you're not into the whole brevity thing), and I'm a latecomer to the brony fandom, as somebody who only started watching MLP back in late summer 2020. More than that, my most established footprint on the internet is as a long-time member of the YSFlight Simulator community, where I lead a combat group and take part in events throughout the year, more recently hosting them myself as well. In particular, I've been a part of the small, but dedicated YSFlight Headquarters aerobatics community for over a year now, and continue to push the envelope on putting together more and more exciting performances for our various virtual airshows.
Since our community has shrunk so much over the last decade, we no longer have enough players to support a wide variety of live display teams. Now, normally, that would be where this story ends... but, you see, YSFlight is a funny animal for a flight simulator. Its graphics are massively outdated, and physics are very much YMMV - after all, it's programmed by just one guy who started it in 1999 while procrastinating on his honors thesis - but it's more robust in other ways. One thing it allows you to do is spawn a bunch of planes in one session, then use a replay feature to fly every single one of them individually, which you can then save to a file. Those files, in which you can continually go back and re-fly specific parts as much as you want, can be (with some limitations) loaded into and played back in real time on the servers that we use to host YSFHQ airshows. Old legends like Coop (Blue Angels), Kujo (Thunderbirds), and Airbourne (both) used this method down to a science, and I want to take my first swing at it now.
Now, why am I dumping all of this on you to start off this thread? Well, it's all context to get the ball rolling. That being said... well, what's the plan?
The plan is to use this time-tested replay method to re-interpret the Wonderbolts as a true Blue Angels-like, plane-based virtual airshow team in YSFlight Simulator.
Barring any other serious contenders for the spot, if Project Wonderbolt succeeds, it will be my headlining act entry for this summer's YSFlight Royal International Air Tattoo (YSRIAT 2022), a YSFHQ airshow which I now annually organize and co-host with Alpha Star. The final result will be posted to one master video on Youtube as a Premiere on the day of that event. Does that sound like an exciting prospect to everypony here? Because it sure does to me!
Now, normally, this would be where I stop writing the thread and immediately get to work on planning absolutely everything alone, but the truth is that, for once, I probably can't pull this off all by myself. There's a series of hurdles that have to be hopped for the planning, staging, execution, and presentation of this killer performance can really be done. Those hurdles involve the need for outside input, so to get the ball rolling on Project Wonderbolt, I turn the first major question of planning over to everypony reading:
What should the Wonderbolts' plane look like?
I have my own idea to fall back on for this question, but frankly, I have better faith in those of you who really hail from the fandom than in myself to give a great answer to this question. Just remember that, as the Wonderbolts are themselves based on the real-world Blue Angels, whatever designs you mares and stallions have in mind should be in that vein. Also keeping to that tradition, the YSFlight Wonderbolts will be using the same base jet, the F-18C Hornet, the real jet used by the Blue Angels from 1986 to 2020 (and, if you want to try and answer by making a drawing, here's a diagram of it). The best design will be chosen and, with the help of veteran YS modder/repaint artist Tigershark, be made as a fully functional 3D model in-game!
Any feedback is appreciated! Project Wonderbolt is very much uncharted territory for me both as a brony and a YSFlight pilot, but with 12 years of acquired in-game experience and a sufficient amount of dedication, I want to give both communities something they'll never forget. If it gets enough traction, I'll continue to update this thread with further questions for all of you regarding the stages of planning (up next is picking out maneuvers - yay!). Until then, let's run 'em up, everypony!