Brompton Bloke

Well it’s a very interesting time in the world of indoor or virtual cycling at the moment with some recent announcements ruffling a few feathers amongst users.

I’ve been using a few apps recently: ROUVY; a really pretty app called Vieta, which is being led/influenced/whatever by Mike Clucas who originally formed FulGaz (and I note that Klem seems to be involved too, although I don’t know to what extent); RealVelo which works really well, and currently allows me to ride the weekly Crazy Cats group ride every week for free; and of course FulGaz itself.  The group rides I was doing on RealVelo and FulGaz have changed to an earlier time due to clock changes so are really too early in the day for me, so I’ll be giving them a miss until the Spring clock changes.  The ROUVY group rides have only changed by 30 minutes so are doable with a bit of a rush.

The biggest news in relation to apps was that Zwift decided to launch their new Zwift Plus offering.  It’s a bizarre offering, really, and I’ll explain why.

For a bit of background, I started riding virtually in September 2022 on the advice of my consultant who recommended I stop running and start cycling as it’s low impact and I need a knee replacement. I looked around and did some Internet searches for reviews in the cycling press and on YouTube and plumped for FulGaz.

So yes, once upon a time there was FulGaz, founded in 2014 in Australia. As FulGaz grew in popularity and kept increasing its library of rides filmed almost exclusively by riders from their bikes (more than 2,000 routes so far), the owners of the Ironman tournaments decided to buy FulGaz and provide them with videos filmed from vans and occasionally motorbikes. I wasn’t as keen on those, because obviously they didn’t included cycle routes or cycle tracks, but hey.

Zwift (launched in 2015) has always seemed to me to be the worst cycling app out there, despite its popularity.  I don’t want to play a cycling game with what always look to me like cheap games arcade/console graphics, but I can understand the social aspects (more of which later), despite having always just wanted to do my own thing on my own.

ROUVY was formed in 2017 in Czechia and currently has 6,000 routes, filmed by the looks of it mainly from cars/vans. At first I didn’t like the rider avatars, but it has grown on me and despite not liking gamified – is that a word? – virtual cycling, I’ve enjoyed the challenges and yes, even the races and group rides.

In the meantime, Ironman gutted FulGaz, laying off most of its development team and support staff. And then when the wheels fell off, they got fed up of it and sold it to ROUVY.  Initially it looked as though that purchase was mainly for the ride library but amazingly ROUVY after noting the subscribers’ concern and upset they said that providing they didn’t lose too many subscriptions, they’d continue support and development of FulGaz, so we collectively sighed with relief.  There was one major update to the iOS/iPadOS and Windows version which was disastrous, but fortunately it hadn’t been rolled out to tvOS so coincidentally with my changing from the iPad to Apple TV, it meant I was able to continue on the latter with a working build (and I understand it might have now been fixed).

Then Zwift decided that they would buy ROUVY.  The purchase and what it might mean was covered really well by Ray Maker here and here.  One bonus was that it now brought virtual shifting to ROUVY.

And now Zwift are launching Zwift Plus (see DC Rainmaker’s update here) which blends the gameplay with some 4K video rides, but only 21 at launch. Surprisingly perhaps, they were filmed by Zwift and not from ROUVY’s library. Zwift Plus is an extra £100 a year, whereas ROUVY is £160 a year, so for Zwift users on a budget it might work, but there’s just so much more on ROUVY that I can’t imagine anyone paying for both, especially if they’re on ROUVY already. Unless Zwift decide to run ROUVY into the ground as well, as they appear to be doing with FulGaz…

But with a crowded market – let’s not forget Peloton, JRNY, et al – the times they are a’changin’.