Thank you for responding so quickly!
I do like what you did with the first solution in the sense that I kind of get an idea of what I need to do. However there is a portion of example that I think got lost because of how it is presented(my fault). In the my example the links are displayed in a way that it looks like it is on a wheel when scrolling. I achieved it by looping through each link and rotating them on the x-axis. I would like to incorporate the opacity solution you presented, but I am having trouble figuring out how I would do so. It looks like the opacity solution you made takes the array and then uses the keyframes property to achieve the opacity effect, but in my example I am looping through the array and the keyframes property doesn't work since I am working with the individual link when setting properties.
I can't really think of a good way to maintain the positioning without looping through them. Sorry I am not trying to make you do this for me, I am just kind of new with gsap and I also failed math in school. I am envisioning the end result would maintain the wheel look and as the links rotate they also go opaque.
New pen: https://codepen.io/cdubu/pen/zYyPzEL