spelger

As a non paying customer of RGT i had a look at their events yesterday and one happened to catch my liking. it was a race in switzerland about 20km long. first 2/5 flat and the rest up hill about 7% avg grade if i had to guess. i was the 5 to join but when the r4ide started it was only me and one other rider. he bailed out shortly after the climb started.

the scenery was generated using their magic roads feature so i was a little disappointed but impressed at the same time. magic roads is a feature where you send them a route and they generate the scenery for you. so essentially every route you can image can be recreated. even had fans but they all look like they are about to take a poop to me.

no wildlife, good looking cloudy sky, nice trees, cobbles nearly the entire ride up. even had our names painted on the road in a few places, till he dropped out then only mine which indicates some dynamic adjustments to the scenery.

https://www.strava.com/activities/6241078724

coolest thing was that joining the event was so easy. press join and then ride. couldn't be simpler.

and i won the race! came in first...and last.

esarhaddon

Good ride!

Yep. RGT is great for those non-paying customers, since anyone can join any open event. The magic roads could be a bit more interesting visually, but they still do a good job of making it seem like you are riding. Though at the moment if you are looking for really well attended races, the times that are more convenient for Europe are certainly better attended. (RGTdb is what I use to find the better attended events as it has a nice searchable interface - https://rgtdb.com/Events)

The other nice thing about RGT, if you pay for it, is you can setup your own magic roads and your own events almost as easily as joining an event.

I even made this magic road in Sparks a while back - https://api.rgtcycling.com/v1/road/m...e=7Pba2ciA03dH (This one circles the D'Andrea subdivision and goes up Belmar Rd. in Sparks). It feels quite a bit like riding this loop in real life though there are certainly bigger trees in RGT!

Also, for anyone wanting to make their own Magic Roads, one of the community members made this tool to help smooth gpx files. Super useful to make high quality roads. GPXmagic

spelger

i was pleased with what i saw in the magic roads. my little rider only ate leaves from a tree once but for the most part it was quite nice. maybe more so becasue i am not familiar with switzerland. when you road in "sparks" what was it like? i assume you did this route in real life at some point in time...?

i assume you are a paying customer since you did a magic road, what is your take compared to zwift? i like the idea of being able to ride in various places around the world and i wrote an application to do just that but it only shows a totally boring map and where i am. the magic roads is visually pleasing but i do like other riders in zwift that help push me.

european times, had not thought of that, very good idea, i'll check out the link for other events,

thanks,
scott

esarhaddon

As you do more magic roads the visuals do get a little bit boring, but I have done that Sparks loop in real life (I grew up in Sparks). The gradients matchup well with the real world, so it really feels like riding that loop IRL, and with some imagination I do see the sagebrush instead of the trees!

I do pay for both Zwift and RGT. I like Zwift for well attended group rides and racing, and I also enjoy grabbing the badges, getting levels and just going through the gamification elements. RGT feels a little more serious, and I actually enjoy racing on there more since the physics seem a little bit less gamey. RGT's biggest issue is that there just are not as many people on the platform, so there are not as many well attended events. It is picking up a bit now that winter is coming, so hopefully more people check out the platform. Also it looks like RGT is going to become a single app program this week, so that might help people onboard as two apps can get a bit complicated depending on what devices you have access to.

One other nice thing about being able to setup your own events is that you can add bots, so it sort of feels like you are not riding alone. They are not too sophisticated (They pretty much keep to the range of power levels you set them, and they back off on downhills), but if you know what power level you want to do a climb or a ride, you can use them to pace your effort.

spelger

A single app would be nice. that is one of the things i dislike about RGT. That and also forcing the apps to be full screen, i can't see my clock like that.

the more i use RGT the more i am likely to become a paying customer.

thanks for all the info.

spelger

did another event today, just a fast paced group ride. 20ish minutes in and my pc bluescreened. in the application i wrote for myself i added creating a backup file in the background because i was worried about the program crashing. i was happy to find that RGT must have done this as well becasue when i finally got it all back up and running i just picked up where i left off. recently i bluescreened while using zwift and that ride was just gone with the wind.

nice touch RGT.

PeteHski

Have you tried one of the video based apps like Rouvy? I find those best for simulating real world rides and scenery. Rouvy in particular with its AR feature (super-imposing rider avatars in the video) on selected routes. I still mainly use Zwift for group rides and racing, but I use Rouvy to reccy real world rides. You can even get a feeling of deja vous when you eventually come to ride the same route IRL! But I haven't entered any races in Rouvy, so don't know how well attended they are. They won't have Zwift numbers for sure, but then I often find Zwift over-crowded in big events.

I keep meaning to try RGT too. I have the apps loaded up, but never got round to trying it. It looks like a decent alternative to Zwift and more focused on real life routes. I wish Zwift would create more real life routes and iconic mountain climbs like they did with Ventoux last year. In many ways I prefer a well modelled 3D world to HD video as it feels a bit more interactive and 3-dimensional than a video. But I'm not a huge fan of Zwift's "fantasy" worlds. So I usually ride in their realistic worlds and just wish there were more of them.

esarhaddon

Not being able to see the clock was the reason the first thing I did with the new RGT app when I started it up was to press ALT-ENTER to put it in windowed mode on Windows 10!