VR Turbo's

stueys

So I've been hammering along on my Tacx Satori with TR and am using the turbo far more than I anticipated when I bought it. Trying to train for the Etape and alpine rides next summer and I'm getting tempted by the VR Tacx trainers, specifically the Bushido or I-genius.

Wondered if anyone had ever used one or had any knowledge on the differences (the tacx website isn't great)

1. Are the VR trainers actually realistic? Is climbing Ventoux on a Tacx going to help me improve and gauge my ability to do it for real?
2. Some of the forums refer to choppiness when climbing and having to be very careful to chose the right model to get a realistic climbing turbo
3. I've narrowed it down to genius or Bushido with VR addon. Any recommendations or differences between the two?
4. Ay thoughts on Computrainer? Lot of cash, is there really a difference?

Thanks, any help appreciated.

liversedge

Wait for the Wahoo KICKR, it comes out in January I believe. It is gonna rip the higher end of the turbo market to pieces.

I have a Computrainer and a Tacx Fortius. Computrainer is rock solid hardware, Fortius less so. With both, the software is sucky, even the latest and 'greatest'.

I reckon a KICKR + TrainerRoad is gonna be unbeatable.

Regards,
Mark

Alex_Simmons/RST

liversedge wrote:

Wait for the Wahoo KICKR, it comes out in January I believe. It is gonna rip the higher end of the turbo market to pieces.

I have a Computrainer and a Tacx Fortius. Computrainer is rock solid hardware, Fortius less so. With both, the software is sucky, even the latest and 'greatest'.

I reckon a KICKR + TrainerRoad is gonna be unbeatable.

Regards,
Mark

Computrainer + PerfPro software, some ErgVideos for other variety.

stueys

Thanks, the wahoo option looks interesting.

How realistic do you find the trainers? Is it a good option for alpine practice?

Alex_Simmons/RST

I would suggest focus on using a trainer to improve your fitness, and use the VR tools as a means to help motivate you to do the work. Using them as a means to assess actual performance on long steep climbs has many flaws (and I'd suggest the hardware of most are probably not up to the task).

wheeledwidewebb

I have a Genius and find that alpine climbs are reasonable realistic, certainly enough to give you confidence for when you tackle the real thing.

Low cadence on steep climbs can be a bit jerky but if you concentrate on pedalling technique and don't pedal squares then it is fine.

I have used the VR but, although VR works well, I prefer online racing and the real life videos.

As a system to stave off boredom when using these things, the Genius is excellent but remember you will need a decent PC with a good graphics card and a nice big display or TV with PC input.

Make sure you check the Tacx forums as there are a few things that you need to be familiar with, like motor brake calibration.

ben@31

liversedge wrote:

Wait for the Wahoo KICKR, it comes out in January I believe. It is gonna rip the higher end of the turbo market to pieces.

I have a Computrainer and a Tacx Fortius. Computrainer is rock solid hardware, Fortius less so. With both, the software is sucky, even the latest and 'greatest'.

I reckon a KICKR + TrainerRoad is gonna be unbeatable.

Regards,
Mark

The advantage of the Wahoo KICKR is that it will allow you to use any VR software you want with it, this opens up loads of possibilities from 3rd party software publishers. While turbos like Tacx is limited to only using their own in house software.

So what does this mean to me? Well, I was looking at buying a Tacx VR turbo but the laptop I own is an Apple Mac and despite Apple selling millions of Macbooks over the past year, I've recently found out Tacx still isn't Mac compatible. Therefore us Mac owners will be better off spending our money on the KICKR turbo with the Kinomap software.

rhnb

I have the old green i-Magic and use it with the Real Life Video's. The limit with the old i-Magic is the strength of the brake unit - put it this way - I've done the Gavia on the i-Magic and 'for real' and found I couldn't climb it in 39x23 ;-)
So, once it gets above about 5% it adjusts your speed down so you have to try harder to keep the same speed.
Have never tried the newer model but beleive it works up to about 10%?
But, it's still a good work out and for me that's what counts, and the videos relieve the boredom a bit.
I recently found this site...
http://www.real-life-video.nl/index.php/en/
and bought the Maratona dles Dolomites DVD's (2 for 16 euros). I must say I was well impressed with the quality of the video. It's superb. I've found a couple of errors in the gradient (which they say they'll fix) like the descent down the Campolongo suddenly going to 7% incline - making the Pordoi climb about a mile longer than it should be! But I can recommend taking a look at the site - lots of choice.

daveyok

VR turbo's what?