The latest indieVelo update, v0.3.6, released August 12th, 2024, enhances the virtual world with more visual features, landmarks, and themed areas.
indieVelo takes another giant leap forward this week, making exploring the virtual world more interesting for its users.
indieVelo’s developer, following some constructive discussion on the indieVelo Founders Club forums (click here to join: https://indievelo.com/checkouts/indievelo-founder/),
and the community collectively decided to prioritize exploring what the indieVelo engine could do visually.
Therefore, this week’s release starts that work by adding some themed areas to the islands—snow-lined castles, alpine villages, campsites, lookout towers, fishing ports, gothic churches, bridges, windmills that rotate with the current wind speed, and much more.
While there’s much more work to do here (in particular, adding Greebles and more themed areas), this initial start provides a more vibrant world for everyone to explore immediately. At a technical level, it also helps tune the indieVelo engine to ensure high performance across all platforms. Obviously, any and all feedback would also be incredibly helpful to guide what areas to focus on next!
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.
As usual, the release also includes a wide range of other additions, improvements, and fixes (see below for full details), including road-side altitude markers on the mountain to help give a sense of progression, scale, and remaining distance while climbing, a new first-person camera mode that has a slight tilt when going round corners to help improve immersion, and lots of back-end changes to keep everything running as smoothly as possible.
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, then you shouldn’t have to do anything to get the new version, as indieVelo will just 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
The full patch notes are below!
“Thank you all for your amazing support and encouragement. Please do let me know what you think and how best to keep on improving as we continue to define the future of virtual sport together!”
George Gilbert
Patch Notes – v0.3.6 – Key changes from the last version:
- Added various landmarks to the world.
- Added altitude markers to the mountain routes at 100m intervals.
- Added camera lean to 1st person view when going round corners.
- Added lots more custom team kits and event banners.
- Improved Performance Verification checks in group rides / workouts.
- Improved hiding of home button/bar on iPad / iPhone.
- Improved various internationalized translations.
- Improved resolution of terrain textures.
- Improved memory usage throughout.
- Improved API security.
- Fixed bug with lap timer when joining a pacebot.
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.
