Air Ride

Air Ride is a racing technique that appears in all three games of the Sonic Riders series. It is a racing maneuver used by racers riding on Extreme Gear, where users are able to take fly through a series of Dash Rings (in Sonic Riders, they are called "Accelerators") in the air.

Description
When performing Air Ride, the user is able to take off in the air and glide throughout the course, gaining Air (or in the case of Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity, Gravity Points) in the process. This act can sometimes be defined as "Air Riding". The user is able to move throughout the air in order to steer themselves to fly through Dash Rings, which will give the player a boost of speed. (Note that vertical movements are inverse, so if the player moves the control stick/d-pad up, the player will move down and vice versa.) Flying through a series of these will usually lead the player into a shortcut. Over time, the flying Extreme Gear will eventually lose momentum and fall to the ground but at anytime, the player can cancel the Air Ride and drop immediately back down.

Sonic Riders
The move first appeared in Sonic Riders, where only Fly Type characters or other characters riding on certain Extreme Gears are able to perform this technique. The player will find a series of Accelerators after riding through a yellow runway ramps or in mid-air which the player can launch towards via trick ramps.

Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity
The move re-appears in Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity. Here, this ability is only restricted to Air Ride or Yacht-type Gears or Board-type Gears with the Air Ride Gear Part, not by character types. Above that, Air Riding works exactly as it did in Sonic Riders.

Sonic Free Riders
The move re-appears again in Sonic Free Riders. Here, this ability can only be used if the player chooses the Air Ride Gear Part to put on his/her Extreme Gear before a race (the Gear Part can be placed on most Extreme Gear). Due to the Kinect controls of the game, the player Air Rides by extending his/her arms out wide to gain height. If the player wants to drop down, the player simply drop their arms down. There is no horizontal steering while Air Riding in this game, so the player only has to focus on steering vertically.