In simplest form, a flight path is an instruction given to the ship at the far end of the track. The ship follows the path, pulling the track behind it like a tail.

With each flight path, the ship will roll, yaw, pitch, or do any combination of the three simultaneously for the duration of the flight path. Once the flight path ends, the ship's motion will slowly return it to the default position.

The best way to understand how flight paths work is to play with them in the editor. Make one and watch what the ship does as it moves through it. Make another shortly after the first and watch how the ship adapts to move between them.

You can access the Flight Path portion of the editor by clicking the Flight Path Editor button at the top left.
Alternately, press the Change Editor Mode key (default ~ or `) until you get there.



(it is my dream to make these images look good someday. I hope these suffice for now)


F / Shift-F - Make the flight path longer or shorter
Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V - Copy and Paste currently selected flight path(s)
Ctrl-Up / Ctrl-Down - Move selected flight path(s) forward or backward
Shift-Up / Shift-Down - Keep current selection while jumping to and selecting the next flight path
P / Ctrl-P (and Alt variants) - Slow down or Speed up time

It's possible these controls aren't bound to anything.
If so, check Options > Settings > Input,
set Input Device to Keyboard,
set Show Editor Keybinds to Yes,
then scroll down until you find what you need

After any amount of movement, the game will automatically guide the ship back towards the center. This effect gets stronger the further from center it is.

Higher track speeds will move faster (:o). This leads to more pronounced movement effects (but not track twisting effects). Higher track speeds will also return to the center sooner.

Upon entering the influence of a new portion of the flight path, the ship will snap in the direction it was previously curving towards. When used purposely, you can match a song's vibe or emphasize certain noises. When used by accident, however, you might disrupt the flow of the chart entirely.

When moving too far up, down, left, or right, the game will steal control of the ship and direct it back towards the center.
On the upside, this usually prevents clipping through the floor.
On the downside, you lose the ability to go far from the center for that extra emphasis.
If you carefully craft a flight path to avoid the bounding box, someone on a higher track speed will probably run into it anyway.

You can see with the rings the ship travels through that the track does not fly in a straight line. It actually curves slightly downward. This leads to an issue where longer flight paths, even if they don't actually contain any movement, will eventually drive the ship into the ceiling. This happens sooner the higher the player's track speed.

Let the game help you.
For most normal movements, use short but strong flight paths and let the game continue the motion for you. Once you get close to center again, you can use a new flight path to keep the movement going without creating awkward jerks or twists.

Consider the type of movement that suits the section.
This is entirely up to your creative vision. Consider higher overarching ideas, such as barrel rolls, gentle up/down motion, hanging upside-down, or standing still. Let the flight path reflect the song.

Use snap movements with deliberation.
Use a very strong, very short flight path followed immediately with another flight path to create snap movements. The second flight path forces the ship to immediately align with the direction it's headed instead of gently curving there.

Lean into your movements.
For normal movement, roll in the direction you're turning, just as an airplane would. There are certainly use cases for turning without rotating, but in general it looks and feels unnatural.

Check your paths at your target difficulty's track speed.
For Easy through Expert, this means default scroll speed. For XD+, expect players to run anything from 30 to 55. Higher trackspeeds are more likely to break, so check them especially.

Also, I've noticed that longer, gentler flight paths work better on low trackspeeds, while short and strong flight paths work better on higher speeds.

Use a temporary utility background.
Even if you already have another background in mind, use something with a central object so you have a good reference of the middle of the field. I recommend Believe.

Learn from others. Find what you like and learn how to do it.
Here's a few charts with twisty track that I particularly like:
140 - Pt. 3B[spinsha.re] by Animanic
Vainglorious Demon[spinsha.re] by Edge
Hourglass[spinsha.re] by Animanic
Typewriter[spinsha.re] by Gavi Guy, Stella, and Luna
I Lost[spinsha.re] by Animanic
Himitsu[spinsha.re] by Gavi Guy

In this section I will refer to movements by their "strength" (turnAmount). This number isn't accessible in-game, so I'll provide references for them here. Images were taken at track speed 40.
(tip: holding ALT amplifies all movements by 4)

Weak (~50) strength, obtainable by holding the key for ~1 second
These movements are the baseline. Gentle and readable in most scenarios.

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Medium (~200) strength, obtainable by holding alt and the key for ~1 second
These movements are stronger, useful for short sections and changing positions. Roll is somewhat viable, but pitch and yaw will crash into the bounding box at this strength.

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Strong (~2000) strength, obtainable by holding alt and the key for ~10 seconds
I'll let the images speak for themselves.

As silly as these look, this strength of movement is actually necessary for some flight path combinations, which I'll detail below.

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The most gentle movement. I like to use bobbing when the song isn't doing much, such as in intros or really empty interludes.
Notice how short these pieces are. Anything longer, and the ship would probably crash into the floor/ceiling at high trackspeeds.


More gentle movement. I like to align the movement to the phrasing of the music. Usually, this means going in one direction for 4 measures, then the other over the next 4 (or 8 measures, or 16, ...)
The downward turns are important for longer flight paths to prevent higher trackspeeds from crashing into the ceiling.

I like to use basic movement for simpler, calmer parts: verses, interludes, and outros.

Some patterns or ideas might require you to start somewhere besides the center. Just use an extra movement to get there first before starting your real maneuver.

Steep movement is a lot more dangerous, in that you can crash into the walls or make your chart frustrating to read if you're not careful. Try not to run steep movement for more than a second at a time.
This specific example is something I call a dive, where the steep movement goes down and twists hard, and the follow-up continues that twist. It works great at the start of drops and choruses.

Snap is the logical next step after steep. The idea is to pack everything into as small a space as possible. This means you'll need very strong movements.
Snap Movements work excellent for accentuating repeated sounds at the peak of the song. Repeated snap movements are one of my favorite things in a twisty track.

In the same way that blank space stands out in a painting, stillness stands out in a dynamic environment. You can accomplish this by having little or no movement immediately after strong movement.
If you leave empty space after a flight path, the game will move the ship on its own. You need to explicitly tell the game to hold still by placing an empty flight path.

Barrel rolls can be done fast and intense, or slow and steady.
Fast ones are relatively simple. Just send the ship off with enough speed and it will finish the roll itself.

Slower rolls take a bit more babying. Since you don't have high momentum at this roll speed, you have to make the path long. Since the path is long, you have to steer it away from the walls and ceiling. Generally, you'll need to slope down and turn into the twist (right for CW, left for CCW).
So long as you can get past the halfway point, the game will push you in the correct direction. If you don't, the track will turn back the way it came.

With a little bit of SRTB editing magic, you can configure a very basic flight path by changing a few numbers.

Pros:

• fast
  
• easy
  
• safe at any trackspeeds
  
• allows escaping the bounding box

Cons:

• only up/down movement is possible
  
• no control over when/where movement happens
  
• not a public feature, so it may one day get removed from the game

To do this, you must first add any flight path to your track. This gets SRXD to generate the fields we need to modify in the SRTB.

Next, find and open the SRTB in a text editor. You'll want to ctrl-f for corkscrewSize and defaultHeight, which default to 0 and 0.5 respectively.

Higher corkscrewSize leads to larger peaks and troughs in the movement
I'm unsure if negative values do anything.

defaultHeight is exactly what you'd expect. Be careful going below 0 as you can easily clip into the floor.

Make sure to save. If your results don't show up in-game, restart SRXD.
And as always when working with SRTBs, make a backup before you do anything.