In this article, we are going to be learning the basic steps to completing an aerial. We will break the mechanic down step by step and hopefully by the end, you should have a solid understanding of how aerials work.
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If you’re looking to learn further how to aerial and even master advanced aerial techniques, check out Cbell’s recent course on Mastering Aerials.
The Basics
An aerial is when you jump up in the air, tilt your car back and use your boost to fly around the field.
It’s an important skill to learn because at the higher levels of Rocket League, aerials are an essential skill. And at the lower levels of Rocket League, if you learn to aerial consistently, and correctly, It may give you an edge over your opponents.
There are two types of aerials that we will be discussing: the Single-Jump Aerial and the Double-Jump Aerial.
Let’s start with a single-jump aerial:
The Single-Jump Aerial
Here’s how to do a single-jump aerial:
- First, hop into Free Play.
- Once you are in Free Play, go into your settings and make sure you have “Unlimited Boost” turned on.
- To do a single-jump aerial, press your jump button.
- Once you are in the air, pull your left stick down or back. This should begin to lean your car back.
- When the nose of your car is pointed towards the ceiling, let go of your left stick.
- Now you can begin to boost. This should propel your car upwards toward the ceiling.
- Keep in mind that when you are in this position, your car is flying based on the axis of your rear thrusters. Because of this, when you are in the air, you can lean your car forward to speed yourself up and lean your car backwards to slow yourself down.
To practice single-jump aerialling, position yourself in the goal and fly from one goal to the other.
Try to slow yourself down in the air, then speed yourself back up. This will help you get used to changing your speed in the air.
Also, moving your joystick to the left or right will send your car in that direction. But for now, try to stay straight. And get a feel for doing a standard aerial.
Mastering control of your car in the air will take lots of hours and practice, so don’t feel bad if you find this incredibly difficult, everyone finds it difficult at first!
Double-Jump Aerials
Now that you have a grasp of the single-jump aerial, it’s time to move to double-jump aerials.
The only difference between the two different types of aerials is that, with a double-jump aerial, once you jump off the ground and tilt your car back, you want to jump again before boosting.
This ‘second jump’ will release the force of gravity on your car, allowing your car to seamlessly fly through the air, assuming that you have the boost.
To break it down into steps again:
- Jump in the air.
- Tilt your car back.
- Let go of your left joystick and jump for a second time.
- Start boosting. You may notice that this will allow you to climb in elevation much faster than a single jump aerial.
- Keep in mind, that once you jump off the ground the first time, you only have 1 and a half seconds to use your second jump.
- The input is quite fast. If you catch yourself doing a backflip while trying this, this probably means that you aren’t letting go of your joystick fast enough before you jump the second time.
More Advanced Concepts
Okay, so now you know how to get off the ground, let’s talk about how to control yourself in the air.
One of the most important aspects to aerials is learning how to feather your boost. Feathering your boost is when you are in the air, you tap your boost button rather than holding it down. This will allow you to maintain your elevation, while also preserving the amount of boost that you’re using. At the same time, feathering your boost will allow for more control of your car in the air.
The best way to practice this is to jump in the air and try to hover in one place by feathering your boost. After a few minutes of practice, this should become much easier.
To challenge yourself even more, hover in one spot for a few seconds, then change your elevation in either direction and hover in that spot for a few seconds. This should give you a solid grasp of how to catch yourself in mid-air as well.
How to Practice
Now that you have a basic understanding of aerials, how can you combine these things?
In most cases, you will use the single- or double-jump aerial to gain your height in the air. Once you have the height you need for the desired aerial, you can then begin to feather your boost until you have hit the ball.
If you want to make aerials even easier for yourself, try to turn the nose of your car towards the ball before you ever leave the ground. This will help minimize the amount of micro-adjustments that you will need to do in mid-air, while also allowing you to get to the ball faster.
My favourite way to practice aerials is to fly from goal to goal, this time aiming for one of the white lights above the crossbar of the goal before turning myself around and aiming for the light opposite the first one I flew to. Aiming for the lights gives you a target which will force you to make micro-adjustments.
Practicing with a target is much more efficient than just flying around the field. Because it forces you to have an objective.
Another good way to practice this is by using the aerial training pack provided by Psyonix:
These are really good for someone trying to learn aerials for the first time. They offer three different levels of training so that you can step up your aerials as you improve.
Once you can do those consistently, there are loads of training packs and workshop maps out there to help you. But start from the bottom. I understand that you may want to freestyle or air dribble. But in order to do those things, you must first, learn the fundamentals.
There’s so much more to aerialing in Rocket League, from mastering important mechanics like the fast aerial, to learning to fly off the walls with control and precision. Again, if you want to go further check out Cbell’s course.
Thanks for reading this article, and I hope you guys found something helpful. Again, if you’re looking to hire a coach you can find me here as well as other coaches and courses.
