Free Ride Magic Buckets on EBC Indoors with Session Player

[ridgerider2]

Note: Don’t forget to answer the poll at the end.

I don’t want to fork out $ for Zwift or Rouvy when all I want to do most days indoors is watch something new while I ride for 1-2 hours.
Even if I had Zwift to participate on ZRL, I wouldn’t want to be limited to 3D world or pay for Rouvy when all I’m interested in is some scenery to pass the time especially on Z2 days.
Here’s my feature suggestion on how to make that happen with only a Xert subscription and minimal code changes by the powers that be.

1. Bike The World (BTW) video of the day. Same video all day long auto-selected by XO from a sequential master list of hundreds available routes. There is always a new and different route to ride every day of the week. You would never ride the same route during a year if the master list includes 365 entries.

2. XO recognizes when you start EBC set to Indoor without any workout selected and treats the session as an XMB free ride.

3. You monitor the phone app XMB page views to see buckets filling and the Challenge Level gauge.

4. When you go to the Session Player on XO it launches in full-screen overlay mode with rainbow gauge at bottom center as though that’s your head unit riding outdoors. No other screen elements are shown. The gauge will overlay the road surface in front of you so you are immersed in the BTW video.
   The video of the day starts and loops continuously if your XMB free ride is longer than the length of the video. No harm in riding a couple laps if need be.

Session Player example (overlay mode; transparency = 15%):

5. The Rainbow gauge operates as it does now. Only changes required is how the XMB guidelines are passed from EBC to XO. No need for buckets or Challenge Level gauge as that’s displayed on the phone app.

Session Player rainbow gauge:

XMB for iOS is under development so this feature would work with either phone app.
You could literally roll out of bed, jump on trainer, start EBC, select Session Player on laptop or tablet, and be free riding somewhere in the world folllowing XMB guidelines to complete your training for the day.

Would you use this feature if XMB worked this way indoors?

• Yes
• No
• On occassion

[ulty (Brent)]

I know it’s not possible for web browser windows, but it’d be nice if the pop-out session player UI elements (gauges, interval structure, numbers) all had transparent backgrounds so they could be placed on top of another window without blocking the content.

I’d settle for the session player allowing me to freely browse YouTube from my account and choose any video to watch for a session instead of the same Bike the World routes on repeat. I do like the BtW videos as workout content, but there’s not enough variety IMO.

I don’t have hardware for XMB, so can’t comment on that specifically.

(Sorry, a bit off topic but kind of related.)

[ridgerider2]

@ulty

I’d settle for the session player allowing me to freely browse YouTube from my account and choose any video to watch for a session instead of the same Bike the World routes on repeat.

YT could potentially work too if there were a way to enter a URL or browse to one under Settings (gear icon).

The idea I have in mind would never repeat a Bike the World video as there would be hundreds of different routes in the master list.
You might ride a couple “laps” when your workout is 2 hours and the video-of-the-day (VOTD) is 1 hour long, but you’d be riding a different course every day.

By variety do you mean you want more events or races besides viewing solo routes around the world?
Xert could also add URLs of interest to the master list on occasion or allow crowdsourcing VOTD suggestions, or simply let you over-ride the VOTD entry as above for Youtube.
In either case you’d always be watching something different whenever you want to ride indoors with the Session Player.

[ulty (Brent)]

I seem to get the same 2 or 3 BikeTheWorld videos from the Xert player, even if I try to select a different one. There are 278 videos on the BikeTheWorld YouTube channel. I don’t know how many are in the “Xert video library” or how they are integrated into the player. Perhaps it’s something to do with trying to match the workout duration, or maybe there’s a licensing / partnership agreement that determines available or suggested content.

I generally don’t have a problem with a ride video looping to cover a single workout session, but if it’s the same video I just saw 2 days prior, that means I end up watching it 4 times a week. That’s a bit much for me. I definitely support having more content available. I also don’t want to have to scroll through a list of videos to try and choose one I haven’t seen recently.

Sometimes I just use the EBC app without the player and watch other content, but it’s less than ideal for me. I can watch a movie or other video for simpler repetitive endurance type workouts, but for more intense workouts with variety in intervals, splitting my attention between two screens usually leads to me missing something on one of them or getting surprised by a power change.

I don’t like the EBC app’s display as much as the player because I can’t see all the info I want on a single screen. I much prefer the player’s UI with the gauges where I can see: power, HR, cadence, interval time remaining, next interval metrics all in the same place without having to tap or click something. I also like the player’s workout timeline UI to again easily see at a glance where I am in the workout and what’s coming up next. On a monitor I can use either zoom or no zoom on the timeline and still see enough info. On the EBC app, often the zoom is not very useful because it just shows a solid block, while un-zoomed is too dense.

On the EBC app, I constantly need to interact with the app’s UI to be able to see all the information I want:

1. tap to zoom in / zoom out on the workout timeline
2. swipe left and right to toggle between being able to see HR, cadence, & MPA data, and alternately the interval time and total time remaining.
   I’d rather focus on the workout itself than trying to interact with a UI.

I much prefer the session player’s info panels displayed as a HUD around or as an overlay on some type of video content.

Being able to watch some races would be pretty fun, but the variety aspect for me is more about not repeating the same videos during the week’s workouts, or being able to select my own non-cycling content and still use the session player UI / overlay.

Sorry, a bit tangential there but I agree on somehow getting more variety of content. I did enjoy doing Xert workouts in Rouvy, but also don’t want to pay for multiple platforms at the same time.

[ridgerider2]

@ulty

I generally don’t have a problem with a ride video looping to cover a single workout session, but if it’s the same video I just saw 2 days prior, that means I end up watching it 4 times a week. That’s a bit much for me. I definitely support having more content available. I also don’t want to have to scroll through a list of videos to try and choose one I haven’t seen recently.

Yep, that’s one of the features I’m proposing. No need to try and match BTW video runtime to workout duration. Just surprise us with a new “movie” to watch (and loop) every day we want to train indoors.
278 possibilities watched sequentially starting on Jan1 would mean you wouldn’t see the same route again until Oct 6th. I probably wouldn’t remember going there although it may be vaguely familiar.