Floating High Speed

What is floating hi-speed?

Floating hi-speed is an alternative Hi-speed mode accessed by holding start and pressing EFFECT while utilising SUDDEN+. Its name comes from that fact that in this mode you can change your hi-speed to decimal (floating point) numbers, meaning that you can move your lane cover in such a way that you retain your Green Number.

This Green Number is what all techniques in this guide will refer to as a Base Green Number, or Base GN for short.

  • Your Floating hi-speed Base GN will persist between songs, meaning that you don't have to change it every chart
  • You can switch between Floating hi-speed and regular highspeed by holding Start and pressing Effect. This is the only way to change your Base GN when using SUDDEN+
  • While you are in Floating hi-speed mode, start + turntable will no longer change your Green number

Floating Hi-speed has a maximum base Hi-speed of 10.0x, and a minimum Hi-speed of 0.5x. This means that if you put your lane cover low enough, the game might not let you use the Green Number that you want (for example, DAY DREAM)

Floating

If you are holding Start and move your turntable, no matter what Green number the chart has changed to, it will be reset back to your Base GN. This is referred to as Floating (not to be confused with Floating Hi-speed itself). Shown below is a video of IIDXtom playing 少年A [SPA]. You will see him float after the bpm of the song changes from 90BPM to 192BPM, changing his GN from 157 back to his base GN of 334 so that he can comfortably read the rest of the chart.

Floating without breaking combo is possible on some, but not all charts. You can float while hitting a scratch note at the same time by simply holding start while you hit it.

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WHEN TO USE FLOATING:

  • When you can safely float without breaking combo
  • When you forget the chart has soflan in it (just float to reset)
  • For advanced techniques like pre-floating (covered under advanced techniques)

Switching off the lane cover

But what if the chart changes in BPM and doesn't give me a gap to reset my number? (looking at you, FUTURE is Dead)

One method of lowering your speed rather than floating back to your Base GN is removing the lane cover by pressing Start twice. This is simplest to understand if you have your White Number at 500. If you were to remove your lane cover, you would be able to see 2 times as much, effectively halving your scroll speed. While this technique is useful for charts that double in BPM using 500 White Number, in combination with Gear Shifting (shown below) it can be used on other charts like ICARUS and JOMANDA.

In this video of DOLCE playing CHECKING YOU OUT [SPA], he turns off his lane cover before the song doubles in BPM so that it is readable when the chart changes.

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Final thing about the lane cover. Re-enabling SUDDEN+ by pressing start twice again will automatically float for you, meaning that if you are extremely picky about your White Number you can float by pressing start 4 times, leaving your precious WN untouched.

WHEN TO DISABLE LANE COVER:

  • When the song speeds up without an avenue to float easily, turn off lane cover before
  • When you're about to enter a dense speedup
  • When you'll need to float after a speed change but can't feasibly hit the turntable

Gear Shifting

Gear shifting refers to when you hold start and press the white or black keys. This will change your high speed up by 0.5x if you press a black key, and down by 0.5x if you press a white key.

More importantly, this will not affect your Base GN, meaning that you can adjust your Green Number mid chart and still have the safety of being able to float back.

Here's a video of DOLCE using gear shift on ラクエン -JAKA respect for K.S.K Remix- [SPA]. After the song slows down he gear shifts up 6 times (3.05x --> 6.05x) by pressing the black keys. Before the speedup, he shifts back down 6 times by using the white keys.

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WHEN TO GEAR SHIFT:

  • When the song speeds up without an avenue to float easily, gear shift before
  • When you're about to enter a dense speedup
  • When you'll need to float after a speed change but can't feasibly hit the turntable

If you plan on strictly following methods in this guide, you can now move on to doing so.
However, if you hunger for knowledge be sure to read up on the other Hi-speed mode Regular Hi-speed.