TJ Blakely | Underwater TBS @TJBlakely | Uploaded January 2017 | Updated October 2024, 23 hours ago.
I was testing stuff earlier when I noticed something peculiar about swimming with gun. It's commonly known that you can't STVW with gun out underwater unless you have the fairy camera, but is that *REALLY* true? The answer, of course, is no.

With gun out underwater, when you go into first person mode, you have 11 frames before you're forced out of first person and back into the underwater movement state, which occurs on the 12th frame. However, if you leave first person on the 11th frame, you enter a falling movement state for 2 frames before being forced back into the underwater movement state.

Accessing this falling state is great for 2 reasons:
1. As long as your angle is correct, you can access STVW by leaving first person on the 11th frame, eliminating the need for fairy camera. Do note that this is still frame perfect, so if you have the fairy camera you should use it.
2. We can use it to gain TBS on underwater barrels. The short version of this is enter the barrel and enter the falling movement state on the same frame and you'll have control during underwater tag sequences.

That's not where this stops though, it gets better. Underwater tag barrels are amazing because we can use them to gain noclip (see Splash, Dive TBS). So now TAS has a method of underwater noclip at will and no longer needs to wait during underwater tag sequences.