On October 18th, 2025, Skyward Flight Media posted its 500th release. Founded on March 24th, 2020, this organization has truly come a long way. As we reached and passed this milestone (the article you are reading now is our 503rd release), we take a moment to look back at some of the notable points in our journey so far.

Decision Height

The organization that preceded Skyward Flight Media was named Project Lighthouse (2017-2019). This community was created with a focus on all things about the Ace Combat series from Bandai-Namco. After two years of operation, there would occasionally be content created about games outside of that series, but not in a substantial way.

Project Lighthouse would secure two pivotal interviews in 2019 that would begin a shift in how the content creation branch of that organization would approach future efforts. Their first indie game interview with Johan Persson from Muddy Pixel, developer of Worlds At War and Ace Combat Series Brand Director Kazutoki Kono at PAX South 2019 during the launch weekend of Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown.

Finally having the potential to be recognized as a media entity in a more substantial way, the rebranding in 2020 would be influenced by these two interviews. The new organization, Skyward Flight Media, would become highly diverse in the type of content it would create within the flight game and simulation genre with a more standard game journalism style approach.

Frecce Tricolori Virtuali

A major part of defining the content the newly formed Skyward Flight Media would produce came from our coverage of the activities of Freccee Tricolori Virtuali. In May 2020, our interviews with this virtual air demo team was our first major coverage of content related to Digital Combat Simulator by Eagle Dynamics. While discussing airshow flying and aircraft module development on this platform, our connection with certain individuals that founded IndiaFoxtEcho would also lead to future coverage of their modules in DCS and Microsoft Flight Simulator in the future.

Our work with Freccee Tricolori Virtuali would kickstart our Digital Combat Simulator coverage, which would act as a sort of "counterweight" to our still noticeable Ace Combat series focus within the first 10 months of our foundation.

Creator Highlight Month 2022

While 2021 was mostly spent trying new types of content, monitoring audience reception, adjusting our social media trends and refining creative processes, one of our defining moments in 2022 was Creator Highlight Month.

CHM was a new effort to start covering content creators that interacted with simulated flight operations on their own media channels. The mixture of well-known video content creators and unusual developers successfully opened a new avenue of content. From that time forward discussion of content creators did start on Skyward Flight Media, albeit not in a reoccurring month-long series, but rather multiple single creator focused articles spread out over time.

As of October 2025, the Creator Highlight concept is being reviewed for a potential restart as a formal, consistent series with an altered name to deconflict with another series on the website.

VRChat Aviation: In Game and Beyond

VRChat Aviation had a profound impact on Skyward as an organization and on an individual level.

As an organization, our involvement with this subject started in 2020 during the height of COVID 19 lockdown as coverage of flight simulation in a rather unexpected place. Years later, Skyward has become a staple of airshows, tournaments and media coverage for aviation across the entire platform. This includes a level of 'virtual aircraft development' by two members of the staff designing original aircraft and 3D modeling them from scratch to then fly them in various VRChat worlds.

The personal connections with people we have met have spawned many new opportunities. Some of the VRChat focused world developers have started pursuing game development. One of the Skyward staff members found employment as a 3D modeler for an in-development flight game and government contract work. Another staff member has used their passion and skill as an aeronautical engineer to see some of their designs take to the virtual skies. Some of the partnerships Skyward has made on this platform have also created cross community events on other flight games and in-person meet ups.

Flight Sim Expo Media Partnership

Our involvement with Flight Sim Expo, North America's largest expo focused on flight simulation, was a huge move for us. By May 2021 Skyward Flight Media had found its footing with a rather eclectic mix of content focused on flight games and simulators. Wanting to further expand our content reach, Skyward made contact with the Flight Simulation Association and became a formal media partner for Flight Sim Expo.

Since then, Skyward has made it a point to register for each event as media partners and attend as many of these events in person as possible. The experience of meeting so many individuals and companies within flight simulation has been a deeply impactful experience and has changed the way Skyward operates.

Indie Highlight Series

When deciding what the identity of Skyward Flight Media would be after the rebrand in 2019, we took note that other established flight focused media outlets focused at least 80% of their coverage on two to four flight simulators. Skyward then endeavored to establish itself as an indie flight game supportive platform from its first day of operation. Whether it was the smallest, one-off game created for a game jam or an indie game that reached game consoles, Skyward would be interested in covering it.

Looking for a way to further increase our indie content rotation, the Indie Highlight Series was started on May 17th, 2025. The original concept for this series was to create compilation articles that would discuss many indie games per release. Each game mentioned receiving a paragraph or two of coverage within the articles. Release 001 followed this concept.

Shortly after the series started discussions with Matthew "FlyAwayNow" Nguyen (Project Wingman producer / co-writer, flight game focused producer) about his inclusion into the series began. An agreement was made to have FlyAwayNow join the Indie Highlight Series on July 21st, 2025, with a new focus on interviewing upcoming indie developers creating the next generation of flight games. To date, this has been one of the most successful content series in Skyward Flight Media's history.

About the Writer

Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza

Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. [Read Staff Profile]