Team BKool CycleChat

[bobinski]

I think what has happened, is the SW/FW changes have made it so realistic now, where as before the Bkool trainer flattered to deceive, a big change.

Look at 'Boxers' attempt compared to the strongest riders on the Evening ride. He wiped the floor in time, no disrespect to Boxer, he put in a strong effort exceeding his usual power level.

It is a lot closer now to real riding, there is still room for improvement. Hopefully the upgrades will come quickly.

I agree.
This morning i introduced a cycling friend to the turbo and Zwift. I watched as he went from a slight downhill at 35kph up an incline that transitioned to 9% and then 15%. His speed collapsed and he frantically changed down to keep going. He commented that it was just like coming off the pilgrims way and turning up a steep hill. Interestingly, other riders around us, whatever turbo they were using, were having a similar experience. This kind of suggests bkool is more realistic than before.
The good news is my friend now wants to buy a bkool turbo so he wasn't put off.

 

[BILL S]

Thought that course would have been interesting but the lack of slingshot since the update has obviously made it too frustrating.

Just realised the league is coming to an end but I'm off on holidays soon and doubt if I'll have time to get another sorted. Bill- could I leave it in your capable hands?

No worries Rick. Thanks for all the great rides you've inflicted upon us up until now. I'll set up the next one and will try to pick rides that will minimise the differences between the updated and non-updated turbos.

 

[BILL S]

But hitting an 11% incline would make you dead stop in the real world. Isn't the problem with the course itself? I don't think there are any roads in the world with a sudden +10% gradient shift.
Of course we now have a problem with the remaining "slingshot'ers", who can't get their units firmware updated. Maybe we should ask Bkool how they plan to make the different trainer versions compete on equal terms?

Agreed on the second point Lars. However, on the sudden stops during the stage 6 chaingang ride at least, the sudden stoops were more like hitting a sudden 50% incline for me. Actually a few times it stopped me completely and the message " do you wish to end the session?" came up. If you approach the less steep inclines slower you can make them work, but if you hit them hard you will slow much more. So that's not very realistic.

 

[bobinski]

Agreed on the second point Lars. However, on the sudden stops during the stage 6 chaingang ride at least, the sudden stoops were more like hitting a sudden 50% incline for me. Actually a few times it stopped me completely and the message " do you wish to end the session?" came up. If you approach the less steep inclines slower you can make them work, but if you hit them hard you will slow much more. So that's not very realistic.

Bill, I have not had that happen. I take it you were still applying pressure to pedals and have not stopped pedalling because of the sudden resistance?

 

[BILL S]

Bill, I have not had that happen. I take it you were still applying pressure to pedals and have not stopped pedalling because of the sudden resistance?

Bob, having done the stage6, one and a half times I have tried all sorts of ways of trying to get around the problem or at least minimise it. Anything under 10% and slowing down and powering off could minimise the problem.

 

[Goldwolfie]

I've been off the turbo for a week, so have some catching up to do.

Did Stage 6 this morning and that was hard - used @Whorty league attempt as a ghost, and trailed in about 4 minutes behind in 1hr 31mins.

The only thing I enjoyed was Ennio Morricone on my headphones

Looks like that ride finishes in the league today, so could one of the admin please approve - I might as well get it recorded after the effort I had to put in.

 

[BILL S]

Anyone know if it's possible to get the present league to end before it's scheduled ending of Wednesday 29th? I suspect that it's not as I don't see a way of doing it. The problem being that I'd like to be sure that the new league will be active by the 30th so we can do our usual Thursday 7pm. Also, due to bkools strange timing quirks it's possible that the league won't start in time if we just go for a Thursday league start. A group can only have one league active at any time so we need the old one to finish before the new one starts. @gbrown any ideas?

 

[bobinski]

Bob, having done the stage6, one and a half times I have tried all sorts of ways of trying to get around the problem or at least minimise it. Anything under 10% and slowing down and powering off could minimise the problem.

Bill, your answer kind of convinced me I did not want to do stage 6. It means I won't finish the league but never mind. Respect to all of you who persevered with the ride.
I rode the Pretzel in Zwift instead. 72km and 1600+ m of climbing. 2h 41m but somehow I think still easier than stage 6. Had a great 60km tussle with the QOM for today, a Lil Adolfsen from Denmark who dragged me up meaning for a while I was the second fastest male mountain climber today, at least for a while, with the mountain goat head against my name on the leader board and my jersey replaced for the duration of my achievement with a mountain goat jersey! What a cool idea. I felt very proud as it showed against my Zwift name, bobinski Bkool cyclechat . I am now officially very sore and tired.

 

[<Tommy>]

Great effort bob. Well done mate

 

[theboxers]

Bill, your answer kind of convinced me I did not want to do stage 6. It means I won't finish the league but never mind. Respect to all of you who persevered with the ride.
I rode the Pretzel in Zwift instead. 72km and 1600+ m of climbing. 2h 41m but somehow I think still easier than stage 6. Had a great 60km tussle with the QOM for today, a Lil Adolfsen from Denmark who dragged me up meaning for a while I was the second fastest male mountain climber today, at least for a while, with the mountain goat head against my name on the leader board and my jersey replaced for the duration of my achievement with a mountain goat jersey! What a cool idea. I felt very proud as it showed against my Zwift name, bobinski Bkool cyclechat . I am now officially very sore and tired.

Did you screen cap it?

 

[AAAC 76C]

But hitting an 11% incline would make you dead stop in the real world. Isn't the problem with the course itself? I don't think there are any roads in the world with a sudden +10% gradient shift.
Of course we now have a problem with the remaining "slingshot'ers", who can't get their units firmware updated. Maybe we should ask Bkool how they plan to make the different trainer versions compete on equal terms?

Now for a 'technical' moment.
In a world devoid of drag if you pushed yourself off down a 10% slope that went directly into a 10% climb (there would have to be a transition of course) you would not come to a stop until you got to the height you started from.
In the real world you wont because of profile drag and rolling resistance.
Other reasons you slow quickly going into a steep hill is that generally you are already going up or you have just taken a tight turn into contours.

What I was seeing happen to others on the new firmware is not real as in no way would you come to a sudden stop on any hill that they could put a road on if you hit it in excess of 30 mph, some of the deceleration I have seen you couldn't do with your brakes let alone powering into a hill or even coating into a hill come to that.
It's obvious from what has happened that the SW on your PC is simply telling your turbo trainer what the conditions are, rather than what has changed and so the un-realism we see with the old/new combination was/is something in the Trainer firmware that delays the onset of resistance however it is also reporting back your wheel speed which the PC SW translates into power based on the slope etc..
I think that the SW then fooled itself because if you a putting in so much power on a climb you must be going faster than the wheel speed that is reported so it blue numbers you up to a higher speed.
All this time the Trainer Firmware was going through its delayed transition phase (to make the transition 'more realistic' and not sudden) and so you are still not working against the true slope resistance and so you continue to be able to reach unreal wheel speeds and hit big power spikes until the transition delay is over and then you were slowed down.
Trouble is that some of the hills were too short to finish the transition so you simply flew over them as if they weren't there.
To fix this they need to manage the change in condition in the PC Software rather than trying to make the Turbo 'smart'.
I think all the turbo should have to do is set the required resistance as comanded by the 'game' on the PC.
Or perhaps all they really need to do is to make the stepper motor speed proportional to your road speed (i.e. inertia) when adding resistance so if you hit a 2% from flat at 30 mph the resistance changes more slowly because the stepper motor rotates more slowly where as if you cycle into a 10% a 5 mph the stepper motor should rotate more quickly because you have very little inertia.

 

[Whorty]

Bob, having done the stage6, one and a half times I have tried all sorts of ways of trying to get around the problem or at least minimise it. Anything under 10% and slowing down and powering off could minimise the problem.

I had the exact same as Bill - tried all manner of variations but couldn't stop the instant loss of speed. Only thing I could do was get in a low gear and wait for Bkool to catch up.

 

[Whorty]

I've been off the turbo for a week, so have some catching up to do.

Did Stage 6 this morning and that was hard - used @Whorty league attempt as a ghost, and trailed in about 4 minutes behind in 1hr 31mins.

The only thing I enjoyed was Ennio Morricone on my headphones

Looks like that ride finishes in the league today, so could one of the admin please approve - I might as well get it recorded after the effort I had to put in.

Well done for finishing GW ... not an easy ride to do on your own . Almost the same time as me and same watts/kilo, so at least within the same SW/FW the simulation is creating fair rides and times

 

[bobinski]

Did you screen cap it?

Nope, in my excitement I forgot to press c , but.. I did take a photo with my phone and trying to find a way to copy and paste here.
https://flic.kr/p/Jof86j

 

[bobinski]

Now for a 'technical' moment.
In a world devoid of drag if you pushed yourself off down a 10% slope that went directly into a 10% climb (there would have to be a transition of course) you would not come to a stop until you got to the height you started from.
In the real world you wont because of profile drag and rolling resistance.
Other reasons you slow quickly going into a steep hill is that generally you are already going up or you have just taken a tight turn into contours.

What I was seeing happen to others on the new firmware is not real as in no way would you come to a sudden stop on any hill that they could put a road on if you hit it in excess of 30 mph, some of the deceleration I have seen you couldn't do with your brakes let alone powering into a hill or even coating into a hill come to that.
It's obvious from what has happened that the SW on your PC is simply telling your turbo trainer what the conditions are, rather than what has changed and so the un-realism we see with the old/new combination was/is something in the Trainer firmware that delays the onset of resistance however it is also reporting back your wheel speed which the PC SW translates into power based on the slope etc..
I think that the SW then fooled itself because if you a putting in so much power on a climb you must be going faster than the wheel speed that is reported so it blue numbers you up to a higher speed.
All this time the Trainer Firmware was going through its delayed transition phase (to make the transition 'more realistic' and not sudden) and so you are still not working against the true slope resistance and so you continue to be able to reach unreal wheel speeds and hit big power spikes until the transition delay is over and then you were slowed down.
Trouble is that some of the hills were too short to finish the transition so you simply flew over them as if they weren't there.
To fix this they need to manage the change in condition in the PC Software rather than trying to make the Turbo 'smart'.
I think all the turbo should have to do is set the required resistance as comanded by the 'game' on the PC.
Or perhaps all they really need to do is to make the stepper motor speed proportional to your road speed (i.e. inertia) when adding resistance so if you hit a 2% from flat at 30 mph the resistance changes more slowly because the stepper motor rotates more slowly where as if you cycle into a 10% a 5 mph the stepper motor should rotate more quickly because you have very little inertia.

Rightly or wrongly I don't perceive or find the recent changes producing some of the dramatic outcomes some such as Bill describe. Yes, there is now a dramatic slow down as you transition abruptly or not into an incline. But it doesn't seem that different to real life. Perhaps we are all experiencing different outcomes for all sorts of reasons not least the fact we cannot self calibrate our units. Perhaps the fact I don't auto connect and have not done so for some months makes a difference. It might be significant that after the last update and then manually connecting the unit made a lot of noise as it seemed to recalibrate perhaps. It worried me at the time! And there don't appear to be any issues with bkools ant+ fec implementation which only works when the turbo is manually set up in Bkool.