Review of Virtual Riding Platforms

Training
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I’ve recently been comparing free trials on several platforms. DC Rainmaker did a great review but it’s over a year old now, so thought this might be helpful.

Some disclaimers - I’m not interested in racing (IRL or online) - at least for now, so racing capabilities were not of interest to me. I was looking for an immersive experience that provided some of the sense of actually riding.

I also wanted a platform that worked well from a Windows PC. Not interested in using phone or tablet. So my experiences are based on the PC app.

If you’re new to these, there are platforms that use actual videos filmed by people on the rides, platforms that use some kind of virtualized version of the route, and some that do some kind of combo.

My hardware is pretty robust- i7, 32GB Memory, GB internet, connected via HDMI to a 1080P 32" diplay. PC is using Wifi with at least 150 Mbps download.
I’m using a smart trainer - Wahoo Kickr Snap.
Heart rate and cadence sensors are Ant+.
I’ve also found that using a little blue tooth remote mouse/keyboard helps a lot unless you can mount your PC in easy reach of keyboard.

Zwift - I didn’t even try Zwift. The completely virtual, gamified approach doesn’t appeal to me.

Fulgaz - This one appears to have the largest collection of high quality videos. I really wanted to give this one a good try, but I had multiple problems. The first time I tried it, it connected to my trainer and HR monitor, but never got cadence even though it connected to my speed/cadence sensor. It also crashed 3/4 of the way through the ride and didn’t save anything.
I tried a few other times and never got it to connect to any Ant+ sensors. I’ve given up on Fulgaz. No other platform I’ve tried had these issues with connecting to sensors.

RGT - Virtual ride view. Relatively small collection of rides. Uses a secondary remote app on phone to control app on PC. (I don’t think this is required and I found the lag annoying. The bluetooth touchpad was better). RGT seems more racing oriented. For whatever reason, it didn’t grab me. However, I believe RGT had the most other live riders of the ones I considered. It’s the only one that has a free version (as opposed to free trial), but it has a very limited selection of rides.

BigRingVR - kind of a Fulgaz competitor. The routes are all actual video. The ones I’ve tried have all been pretty high quality. BigRingVR has the best search /filtering facility of all the platforms I’ve tried. You can filter by difficulty, elevation gain, length, and other parameters. You also see the ride elevation profile in the search interface. They should all offer this. Weirdly, you can’t filter and save favorites from the app itself - but you can from the website, which has a somewhat different interface. So far, this one is my favorite for high resolution, straight video. The view is the rider’s perspective - ie you don’t see the bike or rider. I thought I would prefer this but it’s kind of nice to see a virtual rider on a bike sometimes.
The physics here are decent - that is, when you stop pedaling, the bike behaves pretty much as you’d expect. (Some platforms, the bike slows down a lot even if you’re coasting downhill). There are very few structured workouts available though you can import them from Training Peaks. (I don’t remember if you can import from files)

BKOOL - this one offers both video and virtual views of most (but not all) rides. On the rides I tried, the video was pretty poor - blurry. They allow users to upload, so the video is hit and miss. On the other hand, the virtual view is quite nice and surprisingly immersive and “realistic” feeling. It has frequent small groups of virtual spectators cheering you on which I found really annoying, but no big deal. Searching routes is pretty poor - all you can do is sort by one parameter at a time. The platform feels a bit beta at times and has some very quirky aspects. (Also - it’s a Spanish company and many of the routes are described in Spanish. ). It has a good collection of pre-built structured workouts. Some of the rides have other live riders - I’ve found this to be one of the better of the bunch for sharing a ride with others).
I hope they’ll work on some of the issues - but I think this has a lot to offer.

Rouvy - Rouvy takes a hybrid approach. Real video with a virtual rider. The collection of rides is somewhere in the middle of the pack- not huge, but a decently large set. Some of them have other live riders, but so far, I’ve never found a ride with more than one other rider, if that. Mostly it seems to be a solo experience. Similar to BKOOL, there’s no real filtering - just sorting by one parameter at a time. It has structured workouts - less than BKOOL, but more than others. You can’t use them with the full collection of rides - they have specific routes that you can use the workouts with.

Among Rouvy, BKOOL, and BigRingVR - Bkool seems to be the one with the most opportunities to have other actual riders. ( I think BKOOL also allows you to configure Bots, and even decide how strong they are as riders. At least, I think that was true).

In summary, if you want something other than Zwift:
Fulgaz - big collection of real videos, but for me, major technical problems
BigRingVR - also high quality video, decent collection. Probably less than Fulgaz, so if you can get that one to work for you, might be preferable. No other riders in my experience.
RGT - very small collection of rides. Virtualized environment. Of these, probably the best if you want to compete with other real riders.
BKOOL - video view is mix of good and not so good quality. Virtual view is quite nice. Some rides do have other live riders. Large collection of rides. Largest collection of structured workouts of the bunch.
Rouvy - hybrid view. Some structured workouts. Good but not huge collection of routes. It seemed like a lot of rides were either very flat (in cities) or very serious climbs - a bit challenging to find in between. There’s an AR version but I haven’t tried it.

For me, it’s down to BigRingVR, Rouvy and BKOOL - I might try all 3 for a year and see how it goes.

Hope this is helpful!
Michael

10 Likes
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Great info. Is there a reason you didn’t look at TACX?

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My impression was it was for their trainers. Not true?

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There’s also a “family” plan for Rouvy. So you, your partner for eg can share the sub.

RGT - been there a few times. No users mostly

There’s also OneLap (Chinese version of Zwift)

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Zwift is the most immersive experience for me, I’d give it a trial run at least. The amount of riders, events, and route options keeps it engaging.

I’ve tried “real video” options, but there is just a level of “cheese” factor I can’t get over.

That being said, all my training is with Xert and watching shows/movies.

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This I agree. But have to be careful w the testosterone. I kept getting myself into races and the excitement and sheer competition means I was burning matches left and right. I soon fell into overtraining territory.

After that, and coupled w/ the very high subscription fee, I just resigned to watching movies/shows etc while riding (using none of the apps listed above)

1 Like
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For Flugaz I had to strictly use the BT connection for all sensors to make it work. I like the selection of rides and the in-game presentation - really immersive. I think the ride selection could be faster/easier. It has a lot of options for trainer control. I use it often in conjunction with Trainerroad with TR controlling the trainer. But still not sure if the subscription is worth it. For me the virtual aspects are really nice, but as a product, Trainerroad offers more overall.

Looking forward to the integration of the ironman rides into fulgaz/fulgaz style app.

I never tried Zwift (altough my wife has tried it), but if you want some socializing, this is by far the biggest community.

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I have used TrainerRoad for a number of years. Since April 2020, I’ve tried several virtual riding platforms. I’m currently using an iPad Pro 12" tablet for running Zwift or FulGaz, and an Android phone for running TrainerRoad. My smart trainer is an original model Tacx Neo, which has been faultless for about 5.5 years now, used 1-2 times a day on average.

In April 2020, I started with Zwift. I find this one surprisingly immersive, partly because of the numbers of other riders out there, but also because of the platforms I tried, this one feels realistic (perhaps paradoxically because of it’s cartoonish feel) because you can go where you want in the various worlds. I’ve used Zwift for occasional group rides, but not for racing (I race time trials in real life). I’d recommend Michael shouldn’t write this off because it looks a bit cartoon-like! When I reached level 50, I started exploring other platforms.

I found Rouvy’s cartoonish avatars and other road features a bit jarring in contrast to the videos they use.

I find FulGaz really excellent, though not so likely to be great for company riding. The videos are of exceptional quality, despite being user-generated - there are strict rules on how to record these videos. The ever-growing library of videos has routes of all kinds and lengths. The gradients and so forth work really well. I use Fulgaz most days as a video to enliven my TrainerRoad sessions. I think FulGaz has a secure future under the wing of Ironman. I’ve noticed that streaming the videos has improved recently with new server systems, though at peak times can be a bit inconsistent - it’s always good to have some of the videos downloaded locally.

I felt that RGT didn’t really offer much that other platforms did - there were few other riders, and the renderings of real roads not as great as they were touted as. There didn’t seem much choice of routes available, and the concept of routes derived from user-submitted GPS traces didn’t engage me much. You also need to be using two devices for RGT, which may not appeal to all users.

So at the moment I use a mix of TrainerRoad, FulGaz and Zwift, sometimes dependent on what equipment I’m using. I switch between them to maintain a bit of interest for indoor training.

Robert

2 Likes
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So there is some issue with Ant+ connections with Fulgaz, consistent with my experience. I don’t have any BT cadence sensors and my trainer doesn’t provide cadence -but I suppose I could pick one up and see how that works out. BT cadence sensors seem cheap enough these days.

Not sure I understand the comparison between TrainerRoad and Fulgaz. If I understand it, TR provides structured work outs and trainer control with no visual/virtual experience and Fulgaz is essentially the opposite . Is that right?

I suppose what you’re saying is that if you’re going to pay for only one subscription you’d rather have the structured workouts than the visual experience.

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In terms of video quality, my understanding (consistent with what Dr_Robert_D_Saunders said), is that Fulgaz curates user-uploaded videos to maintain quality, whereas BKOOL does not.)

I suppose I should give Zwift a try before writing it off. I think I have a predilection to avoid whatever is most popular, which is probably not the most rational approach. :wink:

@Dr_Robert_D_Saunders , you said you could go wherever you want in Zwift - does that mean you are not locked into whatever route you have chosen? Is there some way to change your route on the fly - ie to make “turns”?

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As long as you don’t join a group ride, you can choose the follow the route or take the alternative road.

I like the option of being able to drop a custom workout into the workout folder and then just use the graphics as a distraction from the efforts.

Rouvy doesn’t allow the uploading of custom workouts, yet I like their option to be able to upload a route I’ve actually done before IRL.

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Yes, when you get to junctions, you can choose to deviate from the route you’ve selected.

Re TrainerRoad, I find the training sessions very effective, but very dull, and I ride them in parallel with FulGaz videos for a bit of entertainment.

Robert

1 Like
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I send my customs workouts to trainingpeaks and trainingpeaks send to rouvy, without any type off problem

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hi.

Actually it does.

I’ve tried them all and I ended up with Rouvy (long time already) because you have real scenic routes (climbs, famous etc) for endurance rides, you have online races including your own created ones, you have workouts with or without videos and you also have free rides with manual slope or power settings on the fly.
But wait is not all flowers …
Despite all the above they have some unbelievable simple but annoying things/bugs to fix mainly now that they are implementing a new app called “Rouvy AR” replacing the old one called “Rouvy Workouts” as follow:

  1. The new Rouvy AR does not avoid windows screensaver therefore you have to remember to turn that off and on every time … a real PITA. The old app works flawless.
  2. The new Rouvy AR no long presents you workout “text messages” (steps instructions) and lost the free ride (slope/power) option. The old app works flawless
  3. All TSS’s showed at their new Rouvy AR workout library are completely wrong making impossible to choose based on this criteria.
  4. The new Rouvy AR only allow video downloads to the main drive giving a hard time for the ones who have bad internet connections and a small SSD… The old app allows you to choose any drive/directory.
    Bottom line, imho, the new Rouvy AR is more a downgrade but at the end it still woth it:-) LOL
    And I’m still a subscriber praying they take long enough to finally discontinue the old Rouvy Workouts while they add all the above to the new one. I hope…

Regards,

PS: they should hire @david with his commitment to support and new features :slight_smile:

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I have been using Rouvy (forgot their old name) since 2015, and Intervals wasn’t around then so had to make do with their workouts, like this one below.

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Since 2020 (March) I’ve used Rouvy AR only which AFAIK didn’t have the option to upload custom workouts.

Zwift is so much easier.

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Guess everything is easier with TP.

I only use their free version as Intervals, WKO5 and Excel (ATP) is enough for me for analysis purposes.

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Have never used the mobile version but the desktop version does allow for creating or import custom workouts
Keep in mind TSS values are all wrong.
The one circled in blue was created with intervals and has a 132 TSS and not 82 … but after running it with Rouvy it will show you the correct TSS on their activities diary.

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Yes exactly, I think TR did a great job with their adaptive training. So it adjusted the TSS/difficulty on your recent workout performamce and RPE ratings. However I need some kind of entertainment. Fulgaz is one of the best for that. Real scenic routes at high quality. But you could also watch Netflix or Youtube.

For the real hard workouts however I prefer to watch nothing, my brain is not capable to actively following something else than my workout. So maximum “entertainment” would be music.

I tried also Rouvy (good overall, but crashed a little bit too often) and also RGT (too slow on my laptop, not many “nice” routes).

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Has anyone gotten Fulgaz to work with Ant+ sensors on bike (cadence) and HR monitor? I’ve had no luck with that, though every other platform I’ve tried (RGT, Rouvy, BKOOL, BigRingVR) has been fine with Ant+.

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Yes it works, but not if i use TR with the Bluetooth connection (or ANT+). But standalone Fulgaz works with Ant+ and BT for me.