Zwift alternatives/complement?
 

What are your intended uses? Do you want to ride around with friends? Train? Race?

Just riding around. So I'm looking for a variety of routes, I guess.

I think Rouvy has video of actual roads. I’m on TrainerRoad and will often run it concurrently with Zwift for visual distraction.

Yeah Rouvy is very good for a video based sim. So is FulGaz although the UI is a bit crude and I couldn't get it to recognise my Polar HRM. So I use Zwift and Rouvy together.

Have a read of these two threads, they mainly stayed on topic and some give their feedback. I settled on Rouvy (which i consistently type Rouby) for the reasons stated on those threads.

https://www.bikeforums.net/indoor-st...rides-now.html
https://www.bikeforums.net/indoor-st...rides-now.html

i think both are good but i liked Rouvy more, partly because i liked the UI better and i liked that i could add virtual riders and my own previous ride if i repeat a route. there are a lot of routes to choose from. Some of the Rouvy routes are crap in my opinion becasue the grade simulation is not granular enough or does not match what is on the screen. For Rouvy's AR type routes this is nt the case, only the ones that are put up by the community (not sure how to do that). So far, i've ridden about 30 routes in Rouvy and all but maybe two were shot from a vehicle. all of the FulGaz rides i did were shot from a bike. I think the bike videos are of a better quality becasue they are traveling at...bike speed. Both will speed up/slow down the videw based on your performace, and since nearly all ROuvy rides are shot vrom a vehicle this means they are all typically slowed down, only an a descent or two do i notice it being sped up.

i came from zwift only because i got bored with the same old rides over and over. i stil zwift from time to time (did one last night) and like it but not enough to pay for it. cost of Rouvy is on par with zwift - 15 or 14 $ per month and can temporarily stop at any time. I did the tree trials of both Rouvy and FulGaz and would recommend you do too. they ran for two weeks. i think FulGaz still lets me ride with some limitations like maybe one or two routes.

Don't forget RGT. more like zwift in that it is all cartoons but very limited routes. their big thing is magic roads, it allows you to send them a .gpx or .fit file and they generate a world for you to replay the ride. not available in the trial but i got the idea.

I ride indoors a lot due to my wife’s health. I ride Rouvy the most. I have Zwift and have tried the others. I enjoy the group rides. An there are always new miles of rides add each week.

you mean miles added to rouvy, right? I've not seen new miles in zwift in quite some time.

I've been riding the Vuelta AR routes recently and they are really good. There's quite a few of them too. I've probably ridden half a dozen of them so far.

The AR routes are done my pay professional route video creators. The non AR routes are done by individuals. Some who are very good and spend time making sure their routes are perfectly matched to the gps. An the gps is smoothed to take out the spikes in the gps.
An many older routes are just people pushing the up load button and not caring about the quality at all.

I just finished the Tour des Stations challenge yesterday. The last ride (Tour des Stations | Thyon 2000 from Hérémence) was pretty challenging but a very nice ride. I am really liking the challenges because there are typically other riders at the same time i ride. They push me harder than i usually go.

The AR routes are really nice. Just had a look at the Vuetla routes, look nice and will have to try some of those. It seems most of these routes just to up hill. I don't mind climbing but to start out immediately climbing it not my cup of tea.

Where is this interface to upload a route? i would not mind doing something like that sometime. i have access to a GoPro. I rode a really crappy rendition of a local hill near me during my trial phase to compare quality with real life. it was real bad and being so close and so beloved to me i would like to make it right.

Currently the old program to sync gps and video has been taken down. As it was quite old and needed work. They hope to have a new program up this year. I have the old program.

Yes, lots of climbing on the Vuelta routes, but there are few flatter routes mixed in. I'm currently training for an epic alpine event, so been doing a lot of the big climbing routes. I'm impressed how well Rouvy streams without bothering to download the videos. I only download routes now if I'm planning on riding them multiple times.

Curious, how good an internet connection do you need to stream routes?

It was fine with 35 mbps connection.

My wife and I have been using FulGaz for a few years because we get two accounts for the price of one and we prefer the videos over the cartoon scenery. The newer rides have very good quality. Today, I did a ride in Australia and the feel was pretty good, numbers looked real, and the scenery was great.

Seems like both FulGaz and Rouvy are good programs. I'll probably try each one before buying into one or the other.

Rouvy allows up to three riders on one subscription. since i'm the only rider in my home i suppose i can race against myself. really wish i could get my kids into riding.

Mine is only slightly better than PeteHski's at ~50MBPS. i've only downloaded two rides but since i don't generally ride a route more than once i just stream them. but Pete's right, it makes sense to download if you will ride it again.

Yeah definitely worth doing the free trials. Another one to add to your list is BKool - which has both video and 3D-rendered routes and more recently AR type routes similar to Rouvy. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. But those are the 3 I would try. You'll also get a good couple of months free riding before having to make a final decision! Fulgaz keep sending me offers for extra free trials, lol.