Rouvy has unveiled several new updates, including the much-anticipated Route Creator, which enables riders to create, personalise and ride their own routes at the same quality as Rouvy official routes.
Having soft-launched to a core group of testers late in 2024, Rouvy’s Route Creator tool is now available to all subscribers, offering a unique and custom experience.
The brand states the launch follows “years of development and testing”, enabling it to create “a system that lets users easily record and upload their route using a GPS-enabled camera, such as the latest GoPro models, to the Rouvy Route Creator tool before converting this into a virtual route to personalise and ride at home in just a few simple steps”.
Global route expansion, crowd sourced?
Interestingly, the launch announcement also points out that “This gives users both creativity and control over their routes, starting a community-driven journey that would enable all routes worldwide to become available on Rouvy.” This begs the question: Are we about to see a rapid growth in route options on the platform?
IRL riding meets VR creation
Rouvy’s proprietary solution completely reconstructs the 3D spatial information from the 2D videos. This enables placing cycling avatars and additional realistic 3D objects, such as starting or finish gates, fans, branding and other on-road features into the user-recorded video.
Users can now work with augmented reality and a covering model in their own videos, giving them full control over distance visibility, realistic shades and lighting, route profiles and even gradients, which are applied and smoothed for seamless compatibility with indoor smart trainers, replicating the real-life feel, virtually.
Route Creator is now available for users with subscription and paused accounts.
Commented on the new updates Rouvy product director, Marek-Martin Matyska said: “Seeing Rouvy Route Creator go live to our subscriber base is a huge moment for us.
“Whilst not changing the core use function of Rouvy, this unique tool will allow riders all around the world to make their experience even more unique and personal, whilst opening up the global map of user-generated routes for all our users, without compromising on quality.”
New Ride Screen and Workout Screen
Forming part of this wave of in-app updates, which further user personalisation within the app, Rouvy has also introduced new Ride and Workout Screens, each offering improved customisation of the visible data points and ride metrics, whilst giving more focus on route visibility for enhanced immersion in the ride.
Workouts themselves have also been revamped with a new Free Ride function, allowing users to simply pedal without power or cadence set within a workout. Meanwhile, power ramping has been introduced to Workout intervals, meaning smoother and more dynamic resistance changes are now possible.
Here Matyska comments: “The (latest) launch comes at an exciting time with several key features and updates being made available, including the new-look ride screen which further enhances platform personalisation through data fields and look and feel. We’re looking forward to seeing our users get hands-on with these new tools and hearing the feedback.”
New Interactive Map Functionality
Finally, following community feedback, Rouvy has overhauled its route search functionality with a new interactive map.
The existing search function remains, but this new addition allows for easier exploration of routes around the world, providing opportunities to discover new regions.
Rouvy already offers users over 1,500 high-definition, augmented reality routes from some of the most stunning and picturesque locations around the world, including well-travelled hotspots and famous cycling climbs to lesser-known remote routes.
This selection of routes is now set to evolve with new, user-generated contributions thanks to the Route Creator, routes that can more easily be discovered thanks to improved searchability, as the platform looks to scale the number of virtual routes to ride from all around the globe.
