Gunslinger Fake Out with Covered Reload

Question

The Way of the Sniper gets Covered Reload:

You duck into a safe position or minimize your profile while reloading to make your next attack. Either Take Cover or attempt to Hide, then Interact to reload. As normal, you must meet the requirements to Take Cover or Hide; you must be prone, benefiting from cover, or near a feature that allows you to Take Cover, and you need to be benefiting from cover or concealed to a creature to Hide from that creature.

Gunslingers have the Fake Out feat:

Trigger: An ally is about to use an action that requires an attack roll, targeting a creature within your weapon's first range increment.

Requirements: You're wielding a loaded firearm or crossbow.

With a skilled flourish of your weapon, you force an enemy to acknowledge you as a threat. Make an attack roll to Aid the triggering attack. If you dealt damage to that enemy with the same weapon since the start of your last turn, you gain a +1 circumstance bonus to this roll.

Fake Out also has the Visual trait:

A visual effect can affect only creatures that can see it. This applies only to visible parts of the effect, as determined by the GM.

How would these two skills interact?

1. If you Hide as a part of Covered Reload and succeed you would no longer be observed. Would this prevent you from being able to use Fake Out on the enemy you are hidden from since it has the Visual trait?
2. Assuming you can use Fake Out does the flat-footed penalty the enemy has from you being hidden apply to the attack roll made to aid?

Any other details I'm missing about how these would combine?

Answer 1

Fake Out breaks stealth from Covered Reload.

As you quoted it:

A visual effect can affect only creatures that can see it. This applies only to visible parts of the effect, as determined by the GM.

Although the description for Hidden condition doesn't say it explicitly, it heavily implies that while hidden the creature you are hidden from doesn't have a line of sight toward you:

While you're hidden from a creature, that creature knows the space you're in but can't tell precisely where you are. You typically become hidden by using Stealth to Hide. When Seeking a creature using only imprecise senses, it remains hidden, rather than observed. [...]

I personally picture it myself like knowing Bob is somewhere behind this bush, since you saw them dropping behind and there is no other place they could have run to from here without you seeing them, but if Alice would just come by right know she wouldn't assume Bob is here.

Here the effect is simple enough that it doesn't make sense to separate it into "visible parts" and other parts, so it would simply fail if you managed to be hidden while do it.

However, in the description of the Hide action, that Covered Reload relies on to make you hidden, there is this stipulation:

You cease being hidden if you do anything except Hide, Sneak, or Step

So what would happen is that when using Fake Out you immediately cease to be hidden, and then the effect works normally. If it was an attack you would get the flat-footed bonus on this attack, as specified, but since it isn't an attack you don't get anything out of being hidden previously.

Answer 2

It takes an action to unhidden which cannot be done as a reaction unless you are using your reaction to unhide, since it has the visual trait you CANNOT use fake out if you are hidden.