Funny that they have an island like Zwift

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

CVR has responded to several questions on Facebook page. Here are a few tidbits I gathered:

• we're happy to announce that CVRcade will be free-to-play and free to download. <will charge for individual races then?>
• CVRcade can be run on very low requirements. You won't be needing to go out an spend a lot on upgrades
• BUT It does not currently support Apple TV - Windows and Mac currently. <I'm out!>
• there will be no more CVR league on Zwift
• After someone received an error registering: Sorry for the inconvenience, we're looking in to the issue. Try again now, it should be functional. <oops, hope this isn't representative of their capacity going forward>
  
• we'll be releasing more and more information in the run up to the closed beta on December 1st. <yah, let me know when you support Apple TV>

Very disappointed as I enjoyed the CVR race series. Is the KISS Zwift series running this year?
@Kid

I competed in CVR’s live event in March in Los Angeles, and while i recognize some issues with this move (most notably lack of iOS / Android / AppleTV integration) i’m waiting for the game to come out before i cast too much judgement.

I will have early access to the program on November 10th and have talked to friends who have been beta testing for a while and the game sounds like it has some very promising features—favoring physics over graphics. It should make for exciting racing!

I’m not sponsored/tied to CVR in any way. I’ll be sure to come back here and update you guys with screenshots and opinions about the software. It’s free to play, so if you have a crappy laptop you can download it on, it’s worth a shot!

 

this is disappointing. zwift racing has dramatically improved my cycling training experience. it feels like zwift is not very supportive of racing on its platform. but i don't want to have to buy into multiple platforms either.

does anyone know what's going on behind the scenes with this?

I have some intel...

- free to play, can purchase "upgrades" (but I doubt anything that will make you faster)
- physics engine ahead of Zwift
- wind from any direction (more natural racing)
- echelons will form based on wind (less "blob")
- tons of various powerups
- create your own courses (and race on them) and race preset courses
- built in audio chat (roll up to a group and immediately hear/talk based on proximity)
- you can crash your bike

Zwift generally doesn't listen to the Zwift racing community, but Frank Garcia (owner of CVR) will. If we have concerns, they will be addressed in a timely manner--and that's huge.

At the end of the day, the gaming industry experiences this all the time. New games came out all the time. If CVRcade is a fun game, I may end up racing on it a lot. If not, it was free and I can stick with Zwift. Maybe CVRcade will make Zwift make some changes that the racing community has been wanting for a long time?

Not all of these are advantages, and even if a particular point were, how would it be implemented?

-For free-to-play aspect, if someone's not paying for it, then how can they ensure enough revenue would be generated to make it stay afloat?

-As for crashing one's bike, how would this actually happen, and what good does it actually serve during the game? So that all the sudden one gets distracted by the "realness" and loses concentration on the current effort? Zwift is nicer compared to real life, b/c it has sections where I don't have to bust U-turns or slow down and coast through an interval (b/c in real life, not doing so means getting taken out by car or crashing). Roads/trails where one can just hammer are quite difficult to find, depending on where one lives.

-As for the wind and echelon, who gets to decide who ends on the leeward side of the wind? You may just say: well, the strongest rider does, but that really doesn't simulate the full situation. Echelon formation is the result of both position and power, and if the former is determined by the latter, then it'd be much better if it doesn't exist.

-As for additional power-ups, really, no thank you.

What does the video environment look like?

I wasn't necessarily listing them all as advantages, just things I've gleaned from people who are in the know. To address some of the things you brought up:
- Fortnite is one of the highest grossing games of all time--it's free to play.
- Players can steer their bikes left/right. Allowing you to gain better draft positioning (not sure how this will work exactly)
- Crashing will hopefully not be a big thing in races, because it seems easy to have my teammate take people out when I attack the field.
- Powerups can probably be disabled in certain races, much the same way Zwift has it set up now. But if they've gotten creative with some new powerups, that sounds pretty cool to me. I've been waiting years for the burrito (draft-neutralizer) to come back and Zwift has been so lazy to not even remove it from the powerup "wheel".

I'm excited for wind in racing--as a strong TT specialist, I have a hard time breaking away from fields on Zwift on flat courses. A strong cross-wind would allow me to attack, then power through the wind like I do outside. That's pretty exciting for me.

thanks for taking the time to answer, but here's a few things

-just b/c it works for Fortnite, doesn't mean it'll work here. Analogies and similes have their limitations. As a decently astute former road racer, features such as echelons would be fun, but the question I'm in my mind is: would my training be worse off as a consequence of trying the alternative (if even if were free).
-so the steering is essentially a moot point then, since it'd require additional hardware purchase of some type. It'll probably mean that people on rollers and certain trainers can't use it, as steering would be impossible. So in order to implement fully, the whole pack would have to have this hardware installed to aid steering. Just sound like too high a hurdle for the gain, compared to current situation

PS. Thanks again for sharing your recovery tips about a year back. I had a knee injury and was getting scared to ride on the roads near where I live. Your story (especially the fan set-up) convinced me that indoor training during the summer could be feasible, and I have benefited greatly from that knowledge

That's a very fair point--zero idea how steering will work. It'd be SO cool if I could use a webcam or something to control positioning by leaning, or head movement--and also my CdA by actually becoming more aero on my bike. It'll take a LOT for things like that to become universal for all people on the platform and it absolutely alienates people on rollers/with setups where a keyboard/phone is not near the bike.

Indoor riding already has a ton of barriers to entry--even for people with disposable income, Zwift racing/riding isn't a cheap endeavor.


And thank you very much for that, glad I was able to help in some way!

"Zwift generally doesn't listen to the Zwift racing community"

can you elaborate? I don't race much on zwift but am curious why you say this

I don't know. I'm curious how that would play out. Attacking in a crosswind is great IRL if you're gambling that an echelon won't form behind you. And that gamble is based on some combination of hoping the people aren't competent enough to recognize the situation and/or having enough competing interests that no one wants to help each other.

But if echelons form "automatically" without regard to skill, that works against the solo attack. A semi-competent echelon will eat a solo attacker alive almost 100% of the time.

What do you want to bet the gamedev was outsourced to some Chinese or Korean firm and it will heavily leverage micro-transactions? No thanks. Too many promises, too many variables in a new platform.

Well Frank says gamedev is in-house, but they will be leveraging a micro-transaction model. Going to laugh if you have to buy $1 boosts or maybe loot crates to get boosts.

Re: steering...I’m sure it’ll just be something really basic like Z-key to veer left and X-key to veer right. You could buy basic programmable keypads or buttons to place on your hoods or something like that.

Revenue model = micro-transactions = consumables / performance boosts. I really hope I’m wrong, but that makes way more sense than race entry fees and paying for cosmetic upgrades.

Eugene wrote:

Revenue model = micro-transactions = consumables / performance boosts. I really hope I’m wrong, but that makes way more sense than race entry fees and paying for cosmetic upgrades.

Their legal terms mention paid accounts:

Not feeling their latest unveil and direct rip off of the Fortnite/Epic Games platform.

https://www.facebook.com/...ts/1393247020818468/

Confusing. I'm signed up for the beta. We'll see how it goes.

What a joke, lmao.

That looks terrible. Like something from the 90s.

This Facebook post was funny.

People are requesting more information about CVRcade. Many want to see the game’s graphics (and we will share those shortly). We have, however, made a point of not sharing graphics, partly to build interest, but mostly because we don’t think graphics are the most important part of our platform. Our philosophy is that equality, human interaction, and gameplay are the most important elements we can offer.
We have created the CVRcade Manifesto to guide us each day and to communicate to others our guiding principles. You will find it reproduced below (click on the image to see it all).

So basically your graphics suck and you pivot away from it with we will all be nice to each other.

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

Please tell me this is a joke. Wow.

From the screen shots I'm pretty sure the bikes/riders are just sprites. No 3D here. What a joke. The gameplay better be phenomenal.

Judging by the name, it´s not.
No doubt that "cade" comes from "arcade".

here's the thing,

I can literally ride around the Zwift CP Perimeter loop and not get bored. Yes, I may get bored on some of the other circuits, but not the CP Perimeter loop, as it is a pretty good replica of real life, and I must have ridden that damn loop some 400-500 times.

I cannot foresee myself willing to put up with that 70s/80s arcade graphics though. Also, i'd much rather not having power-ups and such in zwift; however, in this game, that's apparently something you can purchase, which would suggest that the use of power-ups is encouraged, as it brings in revenue. Really, no thank you.

 

yes zwift racing already has all the elements it needs to be awesome!

maybe fiddle with the drafting a bit, add audio talk, and centralize events/results/ranking/leagues, and it would be all i need.