The latest indieVelo update, V0.2.47, released on April 29, 2024, adds VO2max analysis, rapid event results, group ride enhancements, and five new routes.
Your invaluable community feedback and continuous contribution of innovative ideas have been the driving force behind indieVelo’s success. The platform’s commitment to originality and constant evolution, rather than mere replication, sets it apart and fuels the mission to shape the future of virtual sports.
This week’s release (see below for full details) contains many suggestions to help keep improving your online riding experience. For example:
Advanced Analytics: indieVelo now performs VO2max analysis of your physiology based on your riding to help you train better and achieve your goals. Using a model based on your 90-day best Critical Power (CP) curve ensures your targets and analysis use your current form and fitness, taking into account the natural cycle over the year, as well as injury/illness, etc.
Intermediate Results: indieVelo automatically emails the complete event results (explicitly, now including intermediate sprint/climb points & times) to event organizers immediately after your event ends. Including the complete results data in an easy-to-use CSV format means that organizers can now efficiently run leagues or series of events and automate the calculation of Sprint and KOM competitions, leading to bigger, better, and more engaging events.
Group Rides: indieVelo now supports the much-requested feature for pop-up notifications when a new rider joins a Group Ride late. Additionally, indieVelo now also displays a complete list of starters, meaning ride leaders (and anyone else!) can easily see who else is riding and provide a warm, friendly welcome to everyone at any time.
New Routes: indieVelo now has 5 new routes for you to choose from – a variety of both hilly climbs and flatter sprint courses means that there’s always something to suit everyone.
Please note, however, that with the network infrastructure changes, if you use a firewall or anti-virus scanner on your computer, you may need to add indieVelo as a permitted application and/or enable access to UDP Port 7777 and TCP Port 7777.
More importantly, underpinning the headline new features is a significant improvement in how the networking layer handles errors, leading to fewer disconnects and server timeouts, even on low-quality internet connections.
As usual, there are also a huge number of other additions, improvements, and fixes throughout. These cover everything from bigger UI buttons for easier use on mobile devices to the ability for riders to leave teams and a whole host of infrastructure improvements to keep everything running smoothly.
Note for Mac Bluetooth users: If you find that the Bluetooth icon on the pairing screen has turned red, please follow the instructions linked from https://wiki.indievelo.com/docs/apple-mac-ble-permissions/ to first completely remove, and then re-add, permission for indieVelo to use the Mac Bluetooth connection.
Do you want to steepen your indieVelo learning curve? Check out our How-to-Guides page for details!
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!
“As ever, all this is only possible thanks to your thoughts, suggestions, and ideas on how to improve to keep getting better with every release. Thank you once again for your continued support and guidance for enhancing the sport further!”
George Gilbert
Patch Notes – V0.2.47 – Key changes from the last version:
- Added 5 new routes.
- Added intermediate location arch results to data emailed to organizers.
- Added notification message when new riders late join a group ride.
- Added estimated VO2max analysis to rider profiles.
- Added ability for riders to leave teams.
- Added more teams/custom event brandings.
- Removed rain as a random weather effect (but can still be selected for events).
- Removed older unused code.
- Removed (most of the) Easter Eggs.
- Improved rider analytics to use the best 90-day CP data, not the best ever.
- Improved team view menu to indicate if you’re already a member.
- Improved highlighting of the currently selected event in The Hub.
- Improved size of buttons throughout for easier use on mobile devices.
- Improved server behavior when two clients connect simultaneously.
- Improved tolerance to network disruption.
- Improved network congestion control.
- Improved network error messages.
- Improved network error handling.
- Improved network bandwidth requirements.
- Improved hung thread detection and handling.
- Improved handling of race conditions with file i/o.
- Improved encryption, authentication, and security.
- Improved server diagnostics.
- Improved world-building infrastructure.
- Fixed a bug with the drone camera moving when using the mouse in menus.
- Fixed bug with closing a menu while a route map is being drawn.
- Fixed bug with network data handling when arriving out of order.
- Fixed bug with trying to read/write data from a connection as it closes.
- Fixed bug with minor memory leak when saving FIT files.
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.
