The latest indieVelo update V0.2.14 released September 11, 2023, introduces 4 new routes and critical infrastructure bulletproofing!
With four new routes to choose from – from short and flat to long and hilly – this week’s release (see below for full details) now gives you much more choice and flexibility for your custom races and group rides.
Just as important, however, is that the infrastructure continues to be rock solid. In computer software engineering, there’s a truism that getting things to work is relatively easy, but ensuring they never fail is hard.
One example is that I spent most of this week hunting down a bug that caused the network layer to occasionally spike up for a few seconds from its usual 0.1% CPU usage to a whopping 1%. That might not sound like it is worth the effort until you consider that currently, there are “only” up to around 100 riders simultaneously on indieVelo.
In the future, spikes like this would have meant everything stopped working when that scales up to 1,000, let alone 10,000 or more riders.
Putting the effort in now to ensure that indieVelo is completely robust for the future is time well spent.
If all has gone well, you shouldn’t have to do anything to get the new version, as indieVelo will self-update the next time you start it up. If you find any problems, however, instructions on how to manually update are on the website: https://wiki.indievelo.com/docs/updates
Please note that, depending on when you installed indieVelo, you may see a warning message recommending that you update the installer/launcher to the latest version. If you see this, download it again from https://indievelo.com/downloads, and the update will automatically apply. The entire process typically takes a minute or two, often much less.
The full patch notes are below!
“Thank you all again for your continued suggestions and encouragement. Please keep sharing your thoughts and ideas for where to focus next as indieVelo grows rapidly. As more and more riders and events are coming to indieVelo as momentum picks up and the Northern Hemisphere Winter approaches, it’s essential to ensure that everything works as smoothly as possible.
Your feedback on what works best and needs improving makes such an enormous difference – thank you again!“
indieVelo founder Dr. George Gilbert
Patch Notes – V0.2.14 – Key changes from last version:
- Added 4 new routes.
- Northern Hill Climb: 5.2km with 256m of climbing to the mountain top finish.
- Mountain Top View: 22.1km with 414m of climbing up both main climbs.
- Little Loops: 8.8km with 53m of climbing around the velodrome and nearby lake.
- So Near Yet So Far: 36.6km with 125m climbing around the coast.
- Added bot teams to free-riding & non-team events.
- Added ability to remove non-finished riders in an event if they’re not moving.
- Improved bot bike/jersey color co-ordination.
- Improved bot AI in keirin events.
- Improved spectating in multi-pen events.
- Improved Neutral Zone pacer bot color.
- Improved peak & average bandwidth requirements.
- Improved performance of server with tens of thousands of riders.
- Improved performance of client/server networking.
- Improved performance of API requests.
- Improved performance diagnostics.
- Improved logging of team allocations.
- Improved resilience of client to errors.
- Improved text descriptions in various menus.
- Fixed bug with CSV export of results containing Unicode characters.
- Fixed bug with positioning of rider icon on route profile.
- Fixed bug with occasional UI freezes.
- Fixed bug with Neutral Zone pacer bots in team events.
- Fixed bug with Neutral Zone pacer bots appearing in event entrants list.
Semi-retired after more than 20 years as the owner and director of a private Orthopedic Physical Therapy practice, Chris now enjoys the freedom to dedicate himself to his passions—virtual cycling and writing.
Driven to give back to the sport that has enriched his life with countless experiences and relationships, he founded a non-profit organization, TheDIRTDadFund. In the summer of 2022, he rode 3,900 miles from San Francisco to his “Gain Cave” on Long Island, New York, raising support for his charity.
His passion for cycling shines through in his writing, which has been featured in prominent publications like Cycling Weekly, Cycling News, road.cc, Zwift Insider, Endurance.biz, and Bicycling. In 2024, he was on-site in Abu Dhabi, covering the first live, in-person UCI Cycling Esports World Championship.
His contributions to cycling esports have not gone unnoticed, with his work cited in multiple research papers exploring this evolving discipline. He sits alongside esteemed esports scientists as a member of the Virtual Sports Research Network and contributes to groundbreaking research exploring the new frontier of virtual physical sport. Chris co-hosts The Virtual Velo Podcast, too.
