First steering race report: Holy shoulder checking Batman!
Did @Dan_Connelly’s NorCal race tonight which is a flat 4-corner crit so got to try and figure out pack riding, attacking a group, and doing some pacelining with the steering function. I have the KICKR bike so was using its buttons as a steering. Overall I found it a nice addition to the experience–you could definitely be deliberate in choosing a wheel to hop or jumping out of the line to make an attack.
The “sidepush” is pretty aggressive, if you’ve got a half wheel on somebody you can drive them to the edge of the road pretty quickly and it seems hard to counter. In the final sprint I got pushed hard, losing my draft. This seems like an odd choice for RGT since they otherwise lean hard on the “we’re the more realistic” VR platform and this is, um, very not realistic.
I’m curious how this ends up as it ends up being a “have” / “have not” between riders with steering on or off. I hope that some small tweaks will make an acceptable “not steering” experience.
One gotcha: I think the RGT Remote app defaulted to steering enabled. I had it open for the Race Radio and when I started my test ride all my dude wanted to do was careen to the left side of the road. I assumed my bike’s buttons were wonky and it took a minute to figure out the phone (which was tilted wedged onto my trainer desk) was providing constant steering input.