i-magic v. Realtour

grantus

Was curious to know if anyone uses these products?

I like the look of the i-Magic which can be had for around £350 with the new Fortius software. Looks the part but wondered how the Realtour compared with it as they are a similar price?

Cheers

Grantus

portuguese mike

I've just got a Realtour and i wish i'd saved some money and got a non 'virtual reality' type trainer. For me the interactive DVD route does nothing to alleviate boredom and its not even close to being realistic - you can't tell from the screen whether you're going up hill or down hill and there's no sense of speed either.

i've not use the Tacx equivalent but i suspect the limitations i mention above will similarly apply.

on the plus side as a trainer it is good - very good resistance unit capable of smulating a fairly steep gradient and some decent preset workouts and unlike the Tacx you can use it without plugging in to your PC.

basically if you're looking at those two because of the interactive DVD feature then i'd reconsider because it's really quite disapointing IMO

grantus

Ah!, thanks, it was for the interactive feature I was getting it.

I was worried it might be a wee bit 'gimmicky' :?

DaSy

I have a Tacx Fortius, and for me the Real Life Video is absolutely excellent.

I chose Fortius over the i-Magic due to the much more powerful resistance capability. I have it set up to a 32" TFT and dedicated PC, and the realism is superb. I trained on the Mont Ventoux RLV last year, and recorded a time within a few minutes on the real thing this year.

The quality of the newer RLV's is very good, and the resistance level to the perceived hill on the display matches very well. I initially had it hooked up to just a laptop, but was impressed enough to get a dedicated PC and 32" display for it.

I am always happy to ride it, and if the weather is bad, or as is now the case, my early morning training sessions are not possible due to darkness, I am just as keen to ride the Fortius. Previously I would ride a normal turbo for an hour and be battling with boredom, the same applies with my rollers (which I still use for ldifferent reasons), but the Fortius keeps me engaged and interested for hours. I regularly ride it for 2 - 3 hours, and have a few mates that come round just to compete on the Alpe D'Huez TT on it.

All in all I really rate it...

grantus

Unfortunately I don't think I could stretch the extra money for the Fortius.

The fact the i-magic comes with the Fortius software means I could use the videos albeit with not as accurate replication of hill resistance or free-wheeling on descents however I'm sure I could live with that!

musto_skiff

I have the i-Magic.

I don't use the VR features just use the Catalyst functions to graph performance.

I am happy with music and the numbers to pass the time.

Just about to go on it now

DaSy

I know what your saying about the cost, but I just felt that at the cost of the i-Magic, if it couldn't replicate the intensity of the Alpine climbs, I would ultimately be disappointed. If it's the RLV your interested in, I would hold off and save the extra, as the vastly increased resistance means that hills up to around 15% are still smooth, and it is capable of much higher grades but can start to get a little choppy until you master a smooth pedal stroke, which evens that out.

As a bike shop owner and friend of mine always says "if your gonna be a bear, be a grisly"

DaSy

The freewheeling on descents is a bit misleading, as it will time out after about 15 seconds with a no cadence detected error. This is explained by Tacx as a safety feature, as you wouldn't want the wheel spinning for hours unattened as you could decapitate the cat etc. That I understand, but they do make a bit of a feature of the freewheeling in the marketing of it. As it's a training aid, freewheeling is a tad pointless anyway, so the 15 seconds or so are enough to add a sense of realism to it.

portuguese mike

Sounds like i should have stumped up a bit more cash for the fortius

any one want a week old Elite RealTour?

grantus

Cheers for the feedback chaps - I think I'll go for the Fotius.

DaSy

Hopefully you'll really like it, I've been very pleased with mine.

Make sure the PC you are intending to use has a good video card, 256Mb RAM and DirectX 9 capable, plus a fair bit of system RAM in the PC, a couple of Gb if poss.

These websites are really good, you can download another persons run on a given corse, and race against it without having to have the Web interface. I find it useful to race a route on the VR option, then find a person on the site who has gone just a bit faster, download it and race them as an opponent. It tends to make you push that bit harder - http://imagic.e-cycling.se/index.php

Tacx's forum for the VR trainers is good for troubleshooting info as well as good advice on how to get the best from it - http://tacxforum.ilink.nl/index.php

Hope you enjoy it.......

grantus

Thanks mate.

I'm taking my laptop to my local computer shop today to check that it's suitable as it's 6 years old now.

Certainly the processor is fast enough and there is enough memory on the Hard Disk but i'mnot 100% sure about the graphics and sound requirements so best to check with someone who knows what they're on about before I shell out on the Fortius.

If it turns out my computer ain't good enough I'll be mightily disappointed!!

DaSy

Grantus, to be honest if it's 6 years old it is quite unlikely to be man enough. Most laptops use shared system RAM for the video memory, and this isn't really much good in the Fortius. 256Mb of DDR on board the video card is best.

I have run it on a machine with shared video memory before, and it was okay, but in the VR section it can start to get a bit jerky and re-draws start to get slow etc.

If you can get hold of an older PC that has a PCI-E slot, say a P4 2Gb and put a resonable PCI-E video card in, that shouldn't cost too much secondhand....I work in IT, so the PC part was kind of easy to come by!

grantus

Cripes! - this could get expensive!

DaSy

Yeah, my missus initially took some convincing that the £600ish for the trainer was worthwhile, then the PC became the next 'necessary' upgrade, and finally a 32" TFT TV!

I managed to find alsorts of benefits to her in order to justify it all of course. The TV meant she could also watch it from her running machine (luckily she is an elite marathon runner, so kind of gets the whle training obsession), and well the PC meant she could run DVD films on it....it's all domestic politics

grantus

Domestic politics! - been there!

sloxam

sorry to hijack, but i have a flow and wish to upgrade to real time and vr. which head unit do i need, the green one or the white one? ones imagic, ones fortius but it seems imagic has been upgraded to fortius software so will it do the same as the original white fortius head unit? both are available for £150 and i want to get it right.

sloxam

sorry to hijack, but i have a flow and wish to upgrade to real time and vr. which head unit do i need, the green one or the white one? ones imagic, ones fortius but it seems imagic has been upgraded to fortius software so will it do the same as the original white fortius head unit? both are available for £150 and i want to get it right.

DaSy

sloxam - reading on the Tacxvr forum it appears the correct upgrade for the Flow is the T1915 kit which has a green head unit.

There was an issue with the T1925 upgrade not communicating correctly with the elctrobrake of the Flow, as it is optimised for the motorbrake of the Fortius, a driver issue apparently.

The T1915 kit uses a driver that is fully compatible with the electrobrake. Tacx appeared to say that they were working on this issue on the T1925 in Jan this year, but can't see anywhere were it says it's solved.

Check these threads for info - http://tacxforum.ilink.nl/viewtopic.php?t=6367

and - http://tacxforum.ilink.nl/viewtopic.php?t=6084&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

It may be worth giving Tacx customer support a bell and get the latest info, pointing this issue out and asking if it's resolved...

sloxam

thanks DaSy.
does anyone know if the T1915 runs real video and vr?

DaSy

The T1915 comes with the T1940.01 CD which contains the Fortius software complete with the VR and 3 VR terrains, also has the Catalyst training software and Analyser for post ride analysis of data.

The Real Life Video when I bought my Fortius was just a short demo of a RLV video, and I would assume this would be the same as it's the same install disc from what I can tell. When you purchase the seperate RLV discs they have the install software required to run them as part of the disc, and it all slots into the Fortius software menu.