The latest indieVelo update, V0.2.51 released on May 27, introduces translating into multiple languages and ensuring online safety for all riders.
Internationalization: indieVelo now supports multiple languages. To begin with, translations for most of the primary menus and UI elements are now available in:
Spanish, French, German, Danish, Polish, Slovenian and Swedish.
It is still a work in progress, with more languages (and covering more of the application) due to follow over the next few weeks. A huge thank you goes to the indieVelo community, which has collectively crowd-sourced the translations available so far. If you would like to help with translating indieVelo into your local language, please do let me know by replying to this email, and I can give you more details.
Here’s how to get indieVelo on your AppleTV!
1) Anyone with access to indieVelo on iOS (iPhone/iPad) should now automatically be able to access the AppleTV version too. Simply download TestFlight from the AppStore on your AppleTV, and indieVelo should be there waiting for you to run.
2) Anyone who is a member of the indieVelo Founders Club but doesn’t have access to the Apple versions of indieVelo can email: help@indievelo.com with the email address they use in the AppStore and will receive instructions.
3) Anyone not yet an indieVelo Founders Club member should click here to join, then email me as above.
Online Safety: The indieVelo community is an awesome group of like-minded riders, and while there hasn’t ever been a problem with the online chat, as part of our mission to define the future of online sport, we intend to lead the industry in providing a safe space for everyone to ride in.
indieVelo allows everyone to self-moderate what they see and experience online. If there’s some chat or behavior you don’t want to see, then you can now click on it and choose between two options:
Mute: Temporarily mute messages from that person for just the rest of your session.
Block: Permanently block messages from that person for the current and all future sessions. This option will also prevent them from seeing your messages, joining you, following you, or receiving any notifications about you, etc.
These actions take effect immediately and are entirely under your control, giving you maximum and instant flexibility over the environment you ride in. There are also full audit logs and additional centralized checks for anyone receiving multiple blocks – additional global action can and will be taken on top of the individual actions if needed.
As usual, many other additions, improvements, and fixes exist. These cover significant enhancements to menu navigation and BLE connectivity on AppleTV, more data available for race organizers to help with series organization, fixes to the tire grip/slip physics, and improved performance, resilience, and other background infrastructure changes to keep everything running smoothly as indieVelo continues to grow in size and usage very rapidly.
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.
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!
“Thank you again for your continued support and encouragement. Please keep your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions coming for what you would like to see implemented next and how you would like to see indoor sport continue to evolve.“
George Gilbert
Patch Notes – V0.2.51 – Key changes from the last version:
- Added internationalization infrastructure for language selection.
- Added Spanish, French, German, Danish, Polish, Slovenian & Swedish translations.
- Added the ability to mute another rider’s chat messages temporarily.
- Added the ability to block a rider’s chat permanently, including joins, follows, notifications, etc.
- Added support for AppleTV navigation buttons.
- Added support for a wider range of BLE devices on AppleTV.
- Added version tracking for AppleTV.
- Added each rider’s event rating to the results data sent to organizers.
- Added lots more teams and custom event brandings.
- Added four new AI bot teams.
- Improved detection of swiping on AppleTV remotes.
- Improved use of Tab / Shift-Tab on various menus for navigation.
- Improved performance when logging in.
- Improved resilience to failures in 3rd party services.
- Improved visibility of text editor cursor.
- Improved various menu texts throughout.
- Improved error handling throughout.
- Improved log spam.
- Improved build process.
- Improved terraforming around velodrome/sandbanks.
- Fixed bug with AppleTV not showing names of BLE devices.
- Fixed bug with tire grip/slip physics that affected hard accelerations.
- Fixed the bug with directions shown at some junctions in the mountain.
- Fixed bug with display of riders with very long names.
- Fixed a bug with filtering for all teams in the team viewer menu.
- Fixed a bug with a benign error when opening the broadcast settings menu.
- Fixed lots of other minor niggles.
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.
