spelger

Since i got my Kickr bakc up and running i decided to give Rouvy a whirl. Having real video was actually quite nice. My first ride was an easy ride in switzerland, just some default first choice on the application right out of the box. it felt very smooth, grade changes were nice and gentle. This ride i downloaded the video and that took about 20 minutes-ish.

Today i decided to ride Geiger Grade, this is a route that start about 5miles from home. I've been up that hill dozens of times. I know i could have picked something else but i wanted to compare this ride with the real thing. Absolutely no comparison. the gradient changes were completely horrible. With my eyes closed i could tell this was not the Geiger Grade i am well acquainted with. This ride i decided to stream as i did not want to wait for a download.

i know for certain that the Geiger Grade ride was filmed from an SUV. Not only was i able to see the shadow when the sun was behind me, but also the cars coming down the grade were so slow and the 3 bicyclists that i passed looked like they were doing track stands. Pretty sure this is the cause of hte crappy gradient data.

not sure about the swiss ride, it appeared smooth but the i never saw a shadow because the sun was never behind me. I also noticed that the swiss ride had a little me on the screen while the Geiger Grade ride did not, not even the Rouvy banners here and there.

Ed Wiser

Your Geiger Grade ride was uploaded by and individual that didn’t edit the GPS data to match the route. It can take several hours and many test rides before you get a route exactly right. This person did not do that.
the Swiss ride was an AR ride that means Rouvy had paid an author to make the route with exact standards. So you will get an actuate GPS ride.

MinnMan

I see friends putting up their Rouvy rides on Strava and I can see the appeal of the real video. I do wonder if that would be enough to entertain me through a ride. From what I can tell, it's a totally different approach from Zwift, which is about engagement with other people in the same "world".

I think I might like Rouvy for low key endurance rides. Beautiful scenery, real or in video, does help pass the time. But it's hard to imagine doing hard efforts or structured workouts with it. Does anybody here use it in this way?

oldwinger14

Rouvy offers all types of rides - short/long, recreational/races, city/scenic, etc.. Plus you can also have virtual partners to ride with or ride against. These options, plus real-world rides versus animation made me choose and stay with Rouvy when Idid a trial of Rouvy and Zwift 3 years ago.

pennpaul

I think Rouvy's biggest plus and minus is that there are so many routes available, but not all of them should have been posted. There are several good Rouvy ride authors on the platform and if you start there, you really can't go wrong.

I do find Rouvy engaging. Last weekend I was in Tuscany, and this weekend it's looking like the Grand Canyon south rim or along the PCH. After watching the last Bond movie, I was inspired to climb some of the same routes he drove and found several (they're tough!). It's fun to explore.

​​​​​​I've been using it about a year now. I can tell you it's totally possible to put in some hard efforts in Rouvy. A lot of Rouvy rides always seem to go uphill. I have not tried the structured workouts but apparently that was revamped in the app, and it's gotten mostly positive reviews on the Rouvy FB page.

Paul

spelger

I road again yesterday. funny thing happened, i was approaching a round-a-bout and of course a little truck was passing me just as i was about 20 feet away. great. then a pedestrian decided to cross the road right at that point. perfect. i began to slow down. then i realized, what the heck am i doing.

i too am finding that my efforts in the few rides i have done so far in rouvy are harder, at least according to a google chrome bike ride extension that i have. i forget the name.

PeteHski

I used Rouvy this year to reccy a few real life routes and they felt pretty realistic. I quite like their concept of AR too, although it's not available on many routes. The other similar App I've tried is FulGaz, which has great quality video but lacks the AR feature. I also found the FulGaz UI to be less intuitive and I had a problem connecting my HRM to it via BT, which has never been an issue with any other cycling App I've used. So overall I prefer Rouvy for video based simulation.

spelger

i gave fulgaz a try before rouvy but was not able to get it to recognize my Kickr as controllable. will probably try again.

PeteHski

FulGaz connects to my Kickr Bike okay, but it never ever sees my Polar HRM which is really annoying. It's a shame, because their video quality is excellent.

kayakindude

I tried my 1st Rouvy group ride this morning and it was a lot of fun. Rode along the Pacific coast highway with about 20 riders. It was similar to a real world group ride. There are two drafting measurements to simulate being in a group. The regular watt offset when riding behind someone and a percentage adjustment based on position to the ride leader.



Riding in various positions in the group reduced my overall effort effort but riding with others increased my wattage average to 217, solo for me is usually 200.

I really enjoy regular rouvy rides but find this more engaging and definitely a nice option for a weekend winter ride.

PeteHski

Yeah I find that group riding has a tendency to push up my average power too, despite the economy from drafting. It can be a mixed blessing depending on your training regime. For this reason if I'm doing a recovery or base ride I prefer to ride solo so I don't creep above my target HR zone.

spelger

I am pretty sure that when my last week of the rouvy trial is over i will be ending my zwift membership (just tired of the bugs that never get addressed, the constant updates that introduce new bugs, the updates after to correct some of them, etc, etc, etc). i never really cared about the game aspect of it and i am finding that i am riding 4 to 5 more tenths of a W/kg when looking at my Elevate data. maybe it is because of the realism, not sure. what i do miss is the random competition. what i recently learned about rouvy is that i can ride against my previous effort. This is/was a feature in CycleMeter and i used it when i had my phone mounted onto my handle bars. that alone pushed me to go harder. i have not tried this feature in rouvy yet because i am too busy riding different routes.

surak

You can ride against multiple virtual partners, not just your own self. Can be engaging when you pick riders close in fitness and also sometimes interesting to observe they spent their effort over the route. In time trial mode there's no drafting so it doesn't make it easier. Pro-tip: navigating route leaderboards to find good virtual partners is a lot easier on Rouvy's legacy website since the app itself is not the most user-friendly.

spelger

i rode with some virtual partners. i assume these were real rides that someone had done. i picked from a ginormous list of names but not exactly sure what i was looking for because i had no idea how long it would take me to complete the ride. it was fun. i dropped everyone though so it lost its charm. maybe next time i'll try picking riders with times approx 90% of the fastest. i like having someone ahead of me so i can push myself. one of the things i like about zwift because there is *always* someone ahead of me.

surak

Utilize the knowledge of your FTP and power curve. Decide how hard you're going to ride (race pace? moderate endurance?) Find the riders with approximately the same avg W/kg over the period of time that you can also maintain at that effort.

You should also have an idea of how long it would take to complete a ride based on the route profile alone because Rouvy's physics model is not going to be that far from reality.

kayakindude

You can also check out the 5 most popular routes, which gets updated monthly.


Right now the Swiss countryside often has 15 or more riders across the route, giving you opportunities to play chase to change things up. Paris is a popular but short route that's great for a recovery ride.

Thomas15

Scott, are you still feeling positive about Rouvy vs. Zwift?
I feel like I'm intrenched in Zwift and for now have it running well with my set-up but thinking about taking advantage of the 14 day trial.

spelger

take the 14 day trial. it costs you nothing and no CC needed. I let my trial lapse and then dove into FulGaz. i find i don't use FulGaz anymore, l liked Rouvy more. Just this past weekend i canceled Zwift and once my paid month ends i will be adding Rouvy. Also, during the summer when i had canceled Zwift for the season i was still able to ride 25KM/month for free, just so a 20ish ride, then long ride a few days later, it would not stop me from riding once i passed 25KM but would not allow me to start a new ride if i had already exceeded that.

i will admit that most (maybe all) of the rides i did in FulGaz were filmed on a bike which makes the other aspects seem better. For instance, other riders that get passed are peddling at a normal pace, people walk like normal. most (maybe all) rides i did in Rouvy were filmed from a vehicle.

regarding Zwift, i do like it but i am a bit tired of the bugs that have been brought up from time to time that they simply don't want to address, little things like the elevation in the Surrey Hills, still there. Also, i've ridden pretty much all the routes and am getting a bit bored. With the Rouvy rides there are over 2 million miles of rides IIRC. Pricing is the same and can be turned on and off like Zwift. According to Elevate all my Rouvy rides have been more intense, might be due to the closer to reality. In fact, once i even slowed down at an intersection because a car came up next to me and a pedestrian jumped right into he cross walk. i hit the brakes then realized what i was doing. had a good laugh at that.

the difference between the films for FulGaz and Rouvy are what makes the FulGaz video better. because the rides I've done in Rouvy were from a car the video is necessarily slowed down. same in FulGaz but only if the rider was faster than me. the difference between the two is video quality. because Rouvy adds other things like being able to compete against other riders and even myself i really like that. Also, they keep a copy of the ride on their site. FulGaz does not and emails a .FIT file which i later need to upload to Strava, maybe the paid version will upload automatically, not sure.

hope that helps.

Thomas15

Yes that does help thank you.

Since upgrading my windows OP to 10 (from 7) I haven't had any major bugs in Zwift but I'm looking to expand my horizons. I was kind of late getting back on my trainer this year usually by the first of Nov I'm back at it this year late Dec. I like to use level ups to give me an incentive to ride the trainer, was stuck in level 39 for what seemed like forever but finally last week got past that. I don't really want to do races (too old) so I really don't know what I want to do as far as VR platforms go. I'm basically lazy but your advice to give the trial a good is good advice, thanks.

blacknbluebikes 

Hey, glad to see the follow thru on your "journey" here, thx much. You've brought interesting points to consider. I have to smile at how far things have come from the days when I was simply glad to watch a video of a ride while sloggin' in the basement offseason. I used to have a problem if the youtube recording was done w/ a helmet cam and the rider turned to look at the scenery - really bad on rollers, I'd swerve... I'll be sticking to Zwift for a while, not bored with it yet and glad to see new content & features starting to increase. Still a bit interested in your bug observations - some seem to focus on "content defects" like Surrey elevation, while you've also mentioned "delivery defects" like client software glitches. Since I moved to a current iPad (Air, 4th gen) the software performance has been trouble free over several releases (was not the case on the old iPad). Very funny about reacting to the cues on Rouvy. Funny. Actually thinking that I might like the abstraction layer provided by the 'animated world' just to keep my nerves at bay. Early in the days of helicopter simulators, I've heard that the mismatch on video cues versus physical actuators caused a lot of very tough pilots to puke in the simulators. Keep your G's down, OK ? <snicker>

PeteHski

I don't limit myself to a single App. I currently use Zwift, Rouvy and SYSTM. I've also used Bkool in the past, but dropped it last year in favour of Rouvy. They all have different strengths and weaknesses. The cost does add up, but with annual discounts and the odd sales discount it's not a huge expense in the overall scheme of things. Rouvy is my favourite for real video based rides, Zwift for online group rides & events and SYSTM for structured training plans. I wouldn't like to pick only one platform, but I do a lot of indoor training all year round and get my money's worth out of all of them.

PeteHski

I've seen this effect with F1 racing drivers in simulators. It doesn't affect all of them, but maybe as many as 1 in 3. Once the video screen wraps around enough to fool the brain into thinking the environment is real (can't remember the numbers, but less than 180 deg), then the mismatch between vision and balance from your inner ear causes your brain to sound the alarm bells. While you can simulate the pitch and roll of the cockpit, you can't simulate the G forces.

Barry2 

FulGaz user with Kickr Bike.
I run the FulGaz app on an Apple TV 4K and stream pre-downloaded rides from my PC via IIS webserver. I've about 85 rides (700GB) stored there, so no stuttering during a ride, ever.
FulGaz (paid) does auto upload rides to my Strava account as well as providing them via email.
I can also ride in Challenge Mode against previous rides of myself or others.

Although FulGaz does offer a group ride function, I really wish you could actually see a rider ahead of you, like Zwift does.

Barry

PeteHski

Have you tried Rouvy? It does pretty much all of the above, including Zwift style rider avatars on AR routes.

Barry2 

I did try some time ago, but found Rouvy buggy and their support useless.
No support for the hood buttons on my Kickr Bike and I didn't like the cartoon nature of the rides.

Barry