Trying out Rouvy on a Chromebook

The combination of high quality videos and gamification would probably make Rouvy my favourite virtual cycling platform.

The videos are not as strong as Fulgaz, and the interest factor not as strong as Zwift, but there has been one factor stopping me using Rouvy for about two years now - vibrating videos. Rouvy probably has the strongest all-round combination though.

Whatever platform I have used - MacOs, iPadOS, and a quick ugh, windows, shudders, attempt have all resulted in the sort of vibrating video that would quickly make me travel sick. The other bar to entry for me was the 100% realism, which though laudible was not really workable with a very highly geared Wattbike Atom - though the subsequent introduction of virtual gearing has resolved that.

I was so impressed with my wee ARM powered Chromebook that I decided to buy a properly powered one, and have been working through setting up a Chromebook as an easy optimized Linux laptop - project here. So I decided to put Rouvy on to see how it works on a Chromebook.

I was surprised, the videos look amazing, and the AR overlay looks really good too - far better than it does on either my iMac, or MacBook Air. All of the graphical artefacts looked far sharper too.

The downside, is that all of the UI on the front pages is screwed, and the menu pages are not functioning at all. Presumably as the screen is rendering for tablet.

I've not tried to ride yet, so have no idea for example how many concurrent bluetooth connections can be held, though suspect that will probably all be grand.

I have completed a back to metal rebuild of my M1 Macbook Air in the last week, since replacing the screen - so I'll try Rouvy again there but expect the video vibration and dodgy graphical overlays will still persist as they do on iPad :(.