Explorer Issues

[rod1492]

Hi All, 

I recently purchased the VIRzoom kit primarily to use the Explorer. Being able to bike through interesting places seemed a sure way to motivate me on my cycling workouts. However I have a pretty poor internet connection (generally 3-6 Mbps) due to my rural location, and I believe it’s causing all kinds of display problems when bicycling in Explorer. I seem to be able to generally stream Netflix at HD resolution regularly, but get constant artifacts/blue screen/navigation issues in Explorer. Is there any way possible to totally cache a particular route ahead of time, so that I could enjoy the scenery on my rides? If not, are there any suggestions that would enable me to optimize Explorer so that it becomes more useable?  Thanks!

[emalafeew]

Good question. Explorer needs a consistent 3 Mbps connection to be able to download and display new 360 images at a pace around 1 per second. We're not allowed to cache images ahead of time, but we try to buffer ahead as far as the white dots go. We also accommodate lower bandwidths or moving faster by not loading the image for a white dot if we predict it won't be ready by the time you get there.

But that doesn't account for network inconsistency, which Netflix might handle better than us because they can buffer further ahead and can pause if they need to rebuffer. When creating rides, at least, we can't predict every route you might take ahead at intersections, and pausing you without warning in VR wouldn't feel good.

We're now working on a new loading scheme for precreated rides that could buffer further ahead to avoid your blue screens and artifacts due to traveling too far on past dot images. Until then my suggestion would be to follow precreated rides and crank up your difficulty (over the HUD) to travel slower for the same pedaling speed.