Tour De Giro - Multiplayer Bike-racing simulator

[arthare]

Tour De Giro is a bicycle road-racing simulator that interfaces with a bunch of power-sensing devices you can get for your bike. This means that you control your player in the game by actually pedaling harder on your bike. It's targeted towards the moderately-to-extremely-enthusiastic cyclist, and can be operated with an ANT+ speed/cadence sensor, ANT+ on-bike powermeter, or computerized trainer like a Computrainer.

Anyway, here's what we consider to be our prettiest recent shot:

My own comments on this screenshot:
-We really need to figure out a "clean" way to display player names when the player is in a big pack. Currently they blend in and out over time and don't look too bad, but at the start in a pack of 60 riders, there's a lot of overlap
-The "local slope" map needs to have its transparency set (I've already fixed this)
-For some reason this portion of the map didn't get scenery placed. We have a couple house and tree models that get laid down, but need more.

Any suggestions about ways to increase prettiness without sacrificing compatibility with old video cards are welcome.

Our current status is that we're fighting a bunch of issues regarding compatibility with older video cards. Since the game will generally be played on the "spare" computer of someone who just wants to get their workout in (aka a non-gamer), we see a lot of really old hardware trying to play the game, and thus a lot of graphics-related crashes. It's so frustrating to push out a new version and see a hail of crash reports from people trying to play it on GeForce2s and Intel cards made in 2004.

[areay]

Hi arthare,

Just to understand what this does...

So you put your bike in front of your TV or computer monitor, then attach some sort of stand that keeps the wheels off the ground, connect it to your computer using this power-sensing device you mention, start cycling while running your program and it uses this input to simulate the rider in your game/application?

[arthare]

Hi arthare,

Just to understand what this does...

So you put your bike in front of your TV or computer monitor, then attach some sort of stand that keeps the wheels off the ground, connect it to your computer using this power-sensing device you mention, start cycling while running your program and it uses this input to simulate the rider in your game/application?

Yep, that's how it works. Ideally, lots of people around the planet race/ride with each other at once. It's a niche market, but there's quite a few cyclists with the appropriate equipment and long winters where they can't otherwise race. Last winter we were getting a fairly-regular "prime time" each night where races were happening.

The stand is called a trainer - they usually integrate some form of power-sucking resistance unit: some pump fluid, some have magnetic resistance, some have a giant fan.
The power-sensing devices can be on the bike cranks (like a Quarq), inside a wheel hub (Powertap), or on the trainer unit itself (CompuTrainer). The CT can modulate its resistance according to commands from a user's PC, so it makes climbing hills actually feel like climbing hills. I'm using a CompuTrainer for development, and the level of hate I get for a hill is very realistic.

[farrer]

First, loved the idea. It could be really great to cicle with some old friends not living near, for example, or to do some group training on really bad weather.

My 2 cents:

-We really need to figure out a "clean" way to display player names when the player is in a big pack. Currently they blend in and out over time and don't look too bad, but at the start in a pack of 60 riders, there's a lot of overlap

Maybe if you use the shirt texture to do that (each player name appears written on their character shirt texture), the result should be clean enough.

And if you plan to follow some specific people (the leader of the championship, for example), the user could simple mark them before the race, for the application show their name above their head as it is now (but only for a few selected people).

[dave2041]

This is awesome! If only i had a power meter/turbo xD