Tips for how to master the flight controls

[Felio]

Yes, the controls for flying are terrible. But once you understand them, you can complete flying races on the first try.

Controls:

You can only fly forward and various degrees of forward-left and forward-right. If you want to turn on a dime, you have to stop completely, rotate the camera to look where you want to go, and fly forward.

While using the stick to fly forward, you adjust pitch (pointing up or down) by using the jump or "down" button. It responds slowly but keeps track of how long you hold the button down. Hold it for two full seconds and your character won't have moved very much, but after you let go, he's going to keep on moving because you held it down for so long. So to make a minor adjustment, you have to tap it maybe a half-second, then wait to see how far you move. It takes practice to figure out how long to hold it.

If you tap a button twice quickly, you will either drop to the ground or get a speed boost, depending on the button. If you drop, don't panic; you can get back up pretty quickly. If you get a speed boost, just ease off the control stick and resume. Don't even bother speed boosting on purpose if you see a few rings all in a row. It's too risky and not necessary to win.

If you tap it twice slowly, it seems to me that the second tap does nothing.

Tips:

Every ring adds a few seconds to the countdown timer, and it's actually pretty generous if you go through a few without making mistakes. As long as your mistakes aren't too close together and you are able to build up a time buffer, you could probably totally flub it two or three times.

Now that you know you have more time than it feels like, don't forget you have the ability to stop and travel vertically, too. It takes much less time than turning around after missing your target. If you fail, it's not going to be because you were too careful. That has never happened to me.

If the worst happens, you don't have to actually fly through the rings, only touch them from any direction. So take the shortest path that involves touching the ring and getting back on track.