BKool Simulator Issue - Anyone else having problems?

[Aleman]

Oddly for me, The rides I've been doing on BKool to Warm Up and Cool Down around a ride on BigRingVR have actually been working pretty much perfectly. ...So 5 'rides' all working well. ... not sure If I'll go back to BKool, as I can ride local rides in BigRing, and I don't have to spend 3 days dumbing down the video from my Fly12, and trying to identify a so called "Zero Speed Segment" when the gpx file is continuous, with 1 second intervals, and no speed < 2mph in any 1 second interval. ... And I don't have to have the BKOOL video editor crashing every 10 minutes!

 

[berty bassett]

i miss bkool
it had everything i wanted
i don't want to moan about it as i don't use it anymore because it just wasn't reliably maintained
with zwift , bigringvr and road grandtours there is everything i had ,done better
just think bkool have their heads in the sand ( or some other dark place ) and i hope they wake up before its too late

 

[bobinski]

i miss bkool
it had everything i wanted
i don't want to moan about it as i don't use it anymore because it just wasn't reliably maintained
with zwift , bigringvr and road grandtours there is everything i had ,done better
just think bkool have their heads in the sand ( or some other dark place ) and i hope they wake up before its too late

They give th eimpression they are pretty much a sales company now, zero support, investment or development and a web presence based around nothing but sales. There was a rumour- well this is the internet- suggesting they had been bought by or invested in by Strava and that excited me but clearly nothing happened. Perhaps they can survive on annual memberships and hardware sales?
BRVR and RGT will get my support and £’s.

 

[Botanique]

Here's my experience with Bkool. I installed the desktop application on a MacBook Pro running Sierra (10.12.6). My trainer is a new Elite Direto, my bike is fitted with Garmin Speed/Cadence sensors, P2M power meter and I use a Garmin HRM belt. I used both a Garmin USB Ant+ stick and another one I bought last week (alternating to be sure the USB Ant stick was not an issue). First issue was signing up with Bkool - they offer both a 30 day free trial and a 7 day free trial. I clicked to sign up for the 30 free trial and was brought to the membership sign up page. So I signed up assuming I would not be charged until the trial ended. But noooooooooo....I was charged immediately for a one year subscription at $96 USD. I immediately cancelled which does not cancel your current subscription, it cancels renewals which are otherwise automatic (why is this still legal?). So....I then tried to get my kit to pair. It would not find the trainer, then it would find the trainer telling me to "select it" but there was nothing to select. Of the other sensors it only found the P2M via BLE - despite their app showing that both the Bluetooth and Ant+ sensors were active. I wrote to customer service. I removed all other applications which might be using Ant+ (i.e. Garmin Express) - nothing worked. So I wrote to customer service again and asked to have my subscription cancelled. Meanwhile, I found (thanks to this forum) BigRingVR and installed their app. I had some struggles getting the sensors to work, but at least it found all the sensors and MIRACLE - my support emails were responded to within 30 minutes to an hour. I'm now up and running on BigRingVR. This morning, two days after I wrote to Bkool, they sent two replies, the first saying they are refunding my membership fee, the second saying I am not eligible for a free trial because it is only for new users (??????).

Bottom line here: BKool may look good and for those for whom it works, congratulations, but if you need support of any kind, forget it. BigRingVR - awesome application, great support and frankly, beautiful videos!

My vote, hands down, is for BigRingVR - I'm working now on getting my own videos uploaded.

 

[Aleman]

That's not a good experience, I use the BKool ANT stick, with a Intel i3 laptop, Garmin HRM, Cadence, and Speed sensors. Installed BSim and it just worked, detected all of my sensors and the Trainer. ... although I can't use the speed sensor and trainer together, not that it would make sense to do so.

It's only recently that the simulator has been playing up, and since placing my support 'mail' with BKool it's behaved perfectly. ... I got a reply from them today with a couple of files (x86 / x64) that they want me to install - Turns out its the Visual Studio 2015 Visual C++ redistributables. Not sure that I want to do so as it's working so well.

Having said that BigRingVR is working brilliantly even if the BKool Smart Pro is underestimating the Watts output. It would be nice if there were a few longer rides so I can still get in a long ride during the weekend if the weather is bad, but I can always use my own video and GPS track 'Locally'. It is looking less and less likely that I'll go back to BKOOL.

 

[theboxers]

It would be nice if there were a few longer rides so I can still get in a long ride during the weekend if the weather is bad, but I can always use my own video and GPS track 'Locally'. It is looking less and less likely that I'll go back to BKOOL.

Try the Bergen Route. The first 6k of the 68 km is brutal, at least for me.
https://bigringvr.com/Ride.aspx?rideID=2156
The Palmer Lake route is not a nasty as it appears @ 84km
https://bigringvr.com/Ride.aspx?rideID=2115

 

[Aleman]

Luz Ardiden for me tonight . . .warm up with part of the New French Ride, cool down with part of it too Got to love BRVR for the ability to 'segment' rides

 

[stoobydale]

Issues today using BKool sim. tried 2 rides and the VR was useless. Difficult to complain because it's free at the moment but makes me think twice about subscribing when other platforms are more stable.

 

[Aleman]

Applied the Visual Studio 2015 C++ redistributables as requested, and withing a minute of starting a ride BSim hung on video playback for around 3-400m . . .then it stuttered a bit before waking up properly and getting on with it. So not really fixed at all, going to try again as I didn't reboot the laptop after applying the fix and I'd already started BSim, so need to see if that does it, although the previous few rides I'd done were pretty much perfect, but not as smooth as BRVR