Oh, that’s perfect. Switching would make a lot of people happy. And some will get offended because somebody’s always offended these days.
At my work, we have a scapegoat named “somebody’. Whenever we have an inexplicable glitch come up, somebody always gets blamed for it. His full name is Somebody bin Laden.
One of these days, we’ll hire an arrogant individual who thinks he’s actually somebody. Rue the day…
But I digress! Love the new name! I hope it gains traction.
+1 but the Daleks might not be happy! I know of at least one who is looking for a Tardis. 
While I fully understand that people who loved RGT would be upset at it’s demise, I honestly think holding much against Wahoo is just a little naïve and disingenuous, while the whole “I’ll not buy a Wahoo product” is, I’ll be slightly tactful, not necessarily sensible decision making.
Wahoo’s hardware product (and support for it) is very good. They are genuinely, in my opinion, both the best trainers and bike computers on the market. Trainers I won’t budge on at all, computers I can understand why some people would prefer features in others, but if an Elemnt suits your needs it is a more steady, reliable, clear and focused product than the competition.
As for RGT, I think the biggest problem (and it’s one Wahoo have in general) was poor communication.
I use virtual cycling environments, but I’m a significant detractor of all of them in practice because there isn’t a single one on the market that comes anywhere even close to a professional level product.
RGT, from a pure software design perspective, was horrible and horribly flawed. Understandable, because it was originally a “project” run by individuals, not a business. Many of the other platforms are similar and I don’t think the people developing them actually understand the corners they build themselves into early in development. RGT, for example, was developed on Unity which was always going to significantly impact its ability to be properly developed and expanded upon, and which probably contributed more than a little towards it’s ultimate demise as Unity were about to change their licensing model.
I’m not speaking just out of thin air either, I spent ten years working for a major computer games developer, I’ve spent my time in software development and around game engines. RGT was, from a technical perspective, poor, below the level a professional team could put together in a handful of weeks to months at most. And that’s not an explicit criticism of RGT, it’s an observation of the market because none of the others are any better (including Zwift).
Zwift is actually the proof of the problem in the market, it’s made a fairly significant amount of money in its time, yet it’s still nowhere beyond what most small development teams would consider to be proof-of-concept quality and I suspect that this is, at least in part, due to the fact that their largest outgoing is probably in marketing.
Zwift holds the lion’s share of the market, it represents probably somewhere approximating 90% of the cycling simulation market (ignoring Peleton which is something else entirely and judging by publicly accessible figures from the various platforms) and yet it’s user-base would still be at the level where most games studios would be considering pulling it as unsustainably small.
The world’s largest and most successful cycling “sim” has a market size that in the “professional” games market would be considered too small to be worth pursuing, yet there are a good handful of other platforms also trying to fit into that space!!! Think about that for a moment. And the market is likely somewhere close to saturation, the vast majority of people who were likely to get into indoor cycling would have done it during the lockdowns of the pandemic, yet it remains in real terms a very small market.
What Wahoo did wrong was to fail to communicate to customers the problems in the market for maintaining RGT.
I believe RGT itself was on the edge prior to Wahoo’s acquisition though and IndieVelo have already stated that their intention is to simply develop the product to a level someone else buys it (which I would be surprised to see happen, at least for the buyer to be anyone of significance and for it not to disappear even faster than RGT).
The problem is that the market simply isn’t big enough to actually support the products that people want, at least without them being significantly more expensive, which makes them more prohibitive, which limits the market and we’re back here again.
The most likely candidate to break the cycle is MyWoosh simply because of who is backing it, they can afford to pay for development without consideration of return.
So, I’ll cull this at this point because it’s become quite the essay.
In summary:
And finally, I really liked Magic Roads, I used RGT for those prior to the Wahoo acquisition and it is the one feature I will miss, because I loved being able to ride virtualised versions of significant real world rides, something no other platform offers.
I also found RGT, outside that specific use-case, utterly dull. The physics simulation was great, but it was ugly, had no real features to its environments and no other people in there with you.
Well said!
yes. And we have to look at Peleton and wonder how they didn’t flop. They were one foot away from vanishing. A 4K USD ‘bike’ that requires at 29 USD a month subscription to use is mind boggling. But I have several friends who do this. Guess it is worth it to them or they want to get value out of their purchase. I don’t see this with any other product in the indoor training space.
This is an excellent description. The “real roads” were nice, but the product didn’t survive on the real roads alone.
RGT’s product was community racing. Magic Roads enabled community racing. This was by far the most common way in which regular users engaged with RGT.
Compare to Zwift. Zwift’s interface, etc, may be below the standard of video games, but it succeeds exceptionally well in its mission: to take indoor riding from something which is intrinsically brutally boring to something which is fun. This assumption motivates all of their designs. And it works. If you like Zwift, you look forward to riding through the different portions of Watopia, spotting various landmarks, etc. It makes the kilometers pass with much greater interest than, for example, the generic scenery of Indie Velo. Zwift’s world builders are, in my view, exceptional. It runs a fine line between realism and surrealism. It makes you want to be there.
RGT’s strength was its racing simulation: it’s superior pack dynamics, drafting model, steering, etc. But without delivering the user base to the community races, it was empty.
And you’re right about it feeling unfinished. The Magic Roads were clearly a work in progress, and early in that progresss. But suddenly development on them froze, and that really was the beginning of the end.
Indie Velo has a great race interface: it’s designed for racing. But who wants to organize community races on limited, generic terrain? At some point rather quickly one becomes bored with the small number of routes without grounding in reality. At least Zwift has a selection of real roads, for those who prefer that (I do), although they’ve neglected this since 2019.
So I think Zwift does a good job, overall, given the limits of their core for handling pack riding.
I find Zwift a reasonably pleasant place to get in low intensity efforts while I listen to news/podcasts/music. No, it’s not remotely realistic, and maybe that’s why I can keep from slowly turning up the throttle - with 4k real scenery like in FulGaz I automatically accelerate until I’m riding at an IF of 0.9+, unless I’m injured or staring at the power meter the whole time.
The biggest drawback for me is that Zwift seems to think it should tell me my calculated FTP whenever I go to download the .fit file - given how I use Zwift, that is discouraging… I am recovering from an injury, but I’m not still down 20%… (I won’t change my FTP in SYSTM, I just suffer more, though maybe less frequently)
Maybe after I recover a bit more, I’ll start racing in Zwift. I do seem to pass as many folks as pass me on most rides even now.
If you were really injured, you may be doing way more damage by keeping the intensity up rather than backing it off and coming back. Sir Neal did an excellent article on this and I used it several times, mostly due to broken ribs (I may have fragile bone syndrome and it’s inherited). I’m sure you are doing what you think is best, but the experiences of others say else wise.
Thanks for the advice, fortunately my docs say I can push as hard as the pain lets me. It’s a strange injury, not cycling related. Right now cycling on a trainer isn’t painful, but a couple months essentially off the bike took a lot from my power output and endurance. And it’s my third major injury or surgery this year (none cycling related), so I’ve had a lot of practice at this recovery thing.
Some simple yoga poses, though, still involve much suffering. How much I have to modify the poses by using blocks or bolsters helps me gauge how far from recovered I am. And I do take seriously Abi’s admonition to refrain from muscling my way into pose perfection.
Sounds interestingly painful. Hope you continue to improve your flexibility. Can you do any of the mobility series?
I gave issues with shoulder rolls using a fixed object (broomstick) and wall angels are an absolute pain due to multiple shoulder injuries.
Huh… So ZWIFT does this too?? I don’t need Zwift if it’s gonna “add insult to injury.”
This a pretty regular gripe I have with Garmin.
Both my Edge 830 and somewhat less frequently, my Fenix 6, give me FTP “Auto-detected” numbers that are:
A. generally too low because I certainly did NOT make a full effort or it was too long an effort to measure by, like maybe a 30 to 50 minute climb, or too short a climb, like a 10-12 minute effort.
and
B. greatly disparate, when both the Edge and the Fenix come up with a finding on the same ride, which happens probably 2/3 of the time. The Fenix 6 is ALWAYS low by anywhere from 10-18Watts.
I’ve learned they aren’t trustworthy, though the Edge 830 CAN be pretty close IF I really do make an effort worth gauging. The Fenix 6? It’s NEVER been close to accurate.
Worst thing is, doesn’t Garmin realize that these “downers” do not give the user a good feeling about the product?
Between that and the times their Training Status throws me into the UNPRODUCTIVE range for stretches at a time, it’s a wonder I haven’t tossed these things.
Yes. Auto-detected FTP changes from AI or machine-learning isn’t going to work correctly unless it can know the difference between training and testing.
I ride a lot of zone 2. The app has to be able to tell the difference. Because a lot of zone 2 training doesn’t automatically equal a drop in FTP. It actually helps improve it. But by how much isn’t obvious until I test.
So I just can’t put any stock in these apps that try to auto-detect my FTP just based on random rides. They need to be smarter than that. And that’s one of the reasons why 4DP works much better than these other systems.
I don’t take the Garmin training status stuff too seriously, I know better how my legs and lungs feel than a simple prediction essentially based on lagged TSS does. But the “maintaining” or even worse, detraining colors in the bar graph sure motivate me to look at why that might be the case. It also makes feel me guilty on vacations, so that’s not so good.
I think you can turn the auto-calculate FTP off on Garmin devices. Which reminds me, I should see if the new beta software for the Venu3 watch allows you to change the FTP from 150W or 200 W or whatever the default is (an astonishing omission) - there are worse issues than auto-calculating FTP.
What’s fun is when my Garmin Edge gives me an FTP a Pro couldn’t produce. The last example is 958W. I think the algorithm is way off. I’ll trust ramp tests as they are very accurate and can be done with the same results time after time.
I’ve had those huge numbers too, probably half a dozen times or more. But they always have occurred when the device had an obvious glitch, like rebooting during a ride or freezing up for a long while and then coming back. I don’t think those are the algorithm, though, just crazy fouled data.
I actually think their EDGE algorithms are pretty accurate, IF one actually puts out an effort that is is the kind of effort the device SHOULD measure, i.e. one that is closer to the proper timeframe and is actually one’s honest best effort, and also isn’t after having ridden too far too hard to be fresh enough to sustain the best effort.
I wouldn’t give a nickel for the findings from the Fenix 6, EVER.
But I totally agree that the ramp tests are the best way to measure, and I also like the 4DP profile test results most. I think they at the very least provide more meaningful feedback on where one’s strength are and what areas can be improved with intentional training.
FTP is a pretty limited way to view one’s fitness and strength.
How frequently do you typically produce “best efforts” for specific intervals when training?
I’m usually using power targets fairly below my max efforts so that I can repeat efforts whatever number of times the workout sets include, so my intervals.icu estimates (I don’t have any Garmin devices) gradually decline in between fitness tests, when I’m actually trying to produce max efforts.
The kind of “best efforts” I was referring to are typically on outdoor rides (because that’s the vast majority of what I do.) As opposed to indoor training workouts, my outdoor rides are definitely NOT training workouts per se. They are just routes I ride that include various lengths of climbs, but more often than not, there will be climbs from at least 8-10 minutes long to up to over 50 minutes. If I WANT to test myself for FTP on a climb, there are several good ones around that allow for relatively steady effort at whatever level of suffering I’m willing to give.
Those are the ones I consider reasonable to gain an FTP score from.
My Garmin Edge 830 has shown me even on less than ideal length climbs that it often gets a pretty close reading for my FTP, though usually lower, which I attribute to having not really put out as much of an effort as to be my “best effort,” so I expect it to be lower than where I THINK I am at the present.
And that’s all I can really do anyway, is THINK I am at a particular FTP level.
I did Team Scream this afternoon. Very tough workout for sure, but I fought through to the end. I ran my FENIX 6 concurrently with SYSTM and at the Save point, it suggested an AutoDetect FTP of 190W, which I declined. It is pretty much a full hour of solid effort, but with such constant fluctuations that drag power levels down erratically, I wouldn’t trust it anyway, but I wish I had run the EDGE as well, just to see where it might have landed. I would guess, based on history, that it would have suggested about 205W.