During a climb animation, you can move the manual aim cursor with L1 + the analog stick, as well as the strafe buttons. The camera position will be stored even after the climb as long as you're still holding L1. This lets you line up vent shots during a climb -- and even still continue to move your aim after the climb finishes -- instead of having to move the cursor from a standstill, saving a few seconds each time.

Example 1: Example 2:

So, I don't understand what's happening at the start of this level where you drop off the edge, turn around, and warp to (I assume?) a later checkpoint. I've tried it a bunch of times but it doesn't work for me.

Also, is this really not a glitch? Cause it seems pretty glitchy.

FLY'N's performance is tied to its framerate, meaning that at 60FPS, it runs at 100% speed, at 54fps it runs at 90% speed, etc. Over the course of a 80min+ game, this adds up to minutes of lost time at anything less than a perfect framerate, and the game often dips below 60 in massive levels.

I first noticed this when comparing runs recorded in FRAPS to runs I'd done on Twitch recording only with OBS. I was consistently losing time on every split, even in autoscroller stages, and had no idea why. It turns out that while recording in FRAPS, with the "Lock Framerate while recording" box checked, FLY'N maintains 100% running speed even if the framerate itself drops below 60. You can even set lower framerates, like 15FPS, and the game will lock its speed to a consistent 25%.

FRAPS unfortunately isn't free, but it's the only thing I've found that can provide a consistent running speed for RTA comparisons of this game. I'd be interested to hear what kind of results other people get with and without using it, or if another method is found to lock the framerate. But if anyone pushes this game really hard in the future and consistently falls below my split times for no apparent reason, that's probably why.

I timed from character control to the SNAPSHOT logo appearing on the screen, but I'm happy to switch to entering the final door, it seems pretty easy to split there too.

Edit: It's been so long that I forgot why I originally did that, it was to mash through the final polaroid cutscene so the credits would play. But it was impossible to tell which input skipped the last one, so I just split on the first visual cue.

You need very quick hits on the first 3 phases to make the 4th possible, as the first balloon will block your jump if you're too slow. The third balloon prevents an even faster 4th hit by being right on the edge of the platform when you'd ideally reach it, so this seems to be the limit of this fight. You have to delay your jump between platforms 2 and 3 so you'll grab the edge of platform 3 after the balloon passes, but before the next laser.

The skulls in phase 4 aren't affected by the global timer, so you can do the same thing every time. When the second "chain" of skulls begins (inside the last large gap before the gaps shrink) I do a medium-delayed double jump followed by a quick double jump to land in the smaller gaps and get onto the first balloon platform. This took a while to get used to, since you can't see the gaps until right before you land in them. You have to know they're coming and stagger your double jumps in the same way.

I'm not sure if grabbing the second key earlier in phase 5 could speed it up any. It'd be a very small time save if so.