Aerial_Orientation_Training.md

Aerial Orientation

The purpose of this exercise is to practice controlling your car in all possible orientations.

Prerequisites

1. PC & Steam
2. Install Bakkesmod https://bakkesmod.com/download.php
3. Install "Lethamyr's Giant Rings Map" from Steam workshop
   1. How to install workshops

Drill

Go through the Lethamyr Giant Rings Map with the following settings:

1. Press F2 to open bakkesmod
2. In the Current Game tab, set the Gravity to 0. (Or -13 if the map being upside down bothers you.)
3. (Optional) In Freeplay tab
   1. Check Car flip color indicator (so you'll know if you got a flip reset)
   2. check Show boost usage

Basic Advice

Tip When "upside down" near the ground, rotate your car to gently push away.

Tip Set stiffness to the highest value.

This exercise is forgiving if you go slowly, very unforgiving as you speed up. Go as slow as you have to in order to stay in control. Go faster when are comfortable.

Control concepts practiced in this exercise

Minimizing Blackout moments

Staying in control through difficult moves builds intuition in the blackout gaps.

Absolute vs Relative Control

For this exercise, minimize how often your left stick is at the dead center. Why? Because when you completely let go of the left stick, your yaw-pitch-roll:stick mapping must be memorized (absolute control). When you are already gently pushing the car in some direction, you have an anchor point in that map (relative control). Switching to relative stick control becomes even more important when flipped in uncomfortable positions. Rather than transposing yaw-pitch-roll:stick mapping between the angle of the car and the angle of your controller, this lets you fly by feel.

Use Angular momentum

The left stick does not control angular velocity, it controls torque (ish). This means that pushing your car to the right and stopping requires pushing the stick to the right, and then pushing the stick to the left. This leads to jerky, inefficient motions. Instead, adjust the existing angular momentum (think martial arts).

Modifications to make it harder

1. No Air Roll
2. Always Air Roll
3. Freestyle. (Not just constant spinning. Take a cool line that puts your car in uncomfortable positions.)