Smart trainer feed back

[peteostro]

Got to try out VZFit explorer today on my cycleops magnus smart trainer. VZfit found it right away but I had to register it to my account and I already had my virzoom bike registered. Seems you can only have one device registered. Emailed support and they got back to me right away and fixed it. Great job!
So after that right off the bat it just worked. Started peddling and I was moving the faster I peddled the faster I moved. Was a nice change of pace to use my smart trainer in VZfit explore over zwift.(I do zwift in VR too but in virtual desktop since it has not native VR support) I did not get any sickness have auto turn enabled, though I have been doing VR for a long time now. Can’t wait until you guys get resistance control working. This is what makes a smart trainer really better than just a power meter.

Few notes:

Spins means nothing to me. This should be replaced with wattage. Also once resistance control is added will need to see the current grade % and should have a little graph showing the upcoming elevation over a 1/2 mile or so so you can get prepared to change gears.
Would be great to have Apple Watch support/ heart rate monitoring displayed on the screen. This is a lot of info but I noticed when looking down at the virtual bike there is a perfect pace for a bike computer. Maybe you could put all this info on one?

Over all pretty cool and looking forward to future updates.

[Shon_T]

Got to try out VZFit explorer today on my cycleops magnus smart trainer. VZfit found it right away but I had to register it to my account and I already had my virzoom bike registered. Seems you can only have one device registered. Emailed support and they got back to me right away and fixed it. Great job!
So after that right off the bat it just worked. Started peddling and I was moving the faster I peddled the faster I moved. Was a nice change of pace to use my smart trainer in VZfit explore over zwift.(I do zwift in VR too but in virtual desktop since it has not native VR support)  I did not get any sickness have auto turn enabled, though I have been doing VR for a long time now. Can’t wait until you guys get resistance control  working. This is what makes a smart trainer really better than just a power meter.

Few notes:

Spins means nothing to me. This should be replaced with wattage. Also once resistance control is added will need to see the current grade % and should have a little graph showing the upcoming elevation over a 1/2 mile or so so you can get prepared to change gears.
Would be great to have Apple Watch support/ heart rate monitoring displayed on the screen. This is a lot of info but I noticed when looking down at the virtual bike there is a perfect pace for a bike computer. Maybe you could put all this info on one?

Over all pretty cool and looking forward to future updates.

I agree with the bike computer idea. all of the things you mentioned are where VR biking is headed.

I'm curious about wattage. I know zwift uses it...how is that a better metric? I'm assuming that it isn't just looking at how many "rotations" but the "power" you are actually generating...having something to do with the resistance level? If I did a shorter steeper climb, but you did a less steep climb over a longer distance, if you ride long enough...would you end up generating more wattage in comparison?

[Snowpelt]

Wattage is generally used as a measurement of effort. I know when I am at the gym on an assault bike, I use wattage to help determine my effort in relation to my goal. On a workout that requires me to do 25 cals, I will try to stay in the 350-450 watt range, 50 cals 280-320 ish , 75 cals 250 for the first 50 then the 280-320 range. This is with a fixed resistance bike so, it really helps me determine how much effort I am putting to get through the work ahead of me.

In general, it's a much more 'serious' measurement for hardcore bikers, and we expected the request when we added smart trainers. Strava uploads contain it now, and we are planning on adding it as one of our HUD options when we do the HUD customization.

[emalafeew]

On the topic of wattage, it's a big reason people have smart trainers so we plan to show it in our HUD soon.

We've also begun having this conversation about Spins together with Kinetic.  Spins are fair for cadence measurement, but speed sensors and most smart trainers don't measure Spins directly (although the CycleOps Magnus does!).  Also when we add varying resistance up and down hills, instead of varying speed like we do now, that could have a different net effect on Spins.  Energy would be the equivalent accumulated metric from wattage, but that would be less meaningful to estimate from cadence sensors (and is one reason that more serious programs like Zwift don't support _only_ having a cadence sensor).

What we are batting around is going back to our old metric of "virtual kilometers", or "vkm" for short.  It was an equivalent distance of riding over flat terrain at an average level of resistance, that we were calculating from our bike & sensor's crank speed.  But Spins was a much more direct representation of crank rotations, and vkm could be confused with the distance you actually travel in our games, which can be wildly different depending on your avatar and other constraints.  

But now with the addition of speed sensors, power meters, and smart trainers we think it might be the most fair "total" metric for all VZfit users.  And because it's a fitness metric and not actual distance, hopefully people will be fine with keeping it km rather than miles, because "vm" would be a much less recognizable shorthand.