Feat: support virtual shifting

[jlaunay]

I saw Rouvy and Biketerra have done some reverse engineering to support the zwift virtual shifting protocol.
Do you plan to add support in BikeControl ?
It would be so convenient to be able to use virtual shifting without relying on third party software.

[jonasbark]

What do you mean exactly with the "Zwift Virtual Shifting" protocol? What would you like to achieve?

[jlaunay]

I have a zwift ride with cog, using Biketerra or Rouvy I can use my zwift play to use virtual shifting (change resistance). It would be great to be able to do this with any soft not just Rouvy.
I saw here they have done this using reverse engineering.

[jonasbark]

But isn't this exactly what BikeControl does? It allows you to connect to your Zwift devices (among others) and use it for any trainer app out there - including MyWhoosh and others

[jlaunay]

Sorry if I'm not clear, my English is really bad.
BikeControl act as a remote (a middleware) it connect to the zwift controller then send shortcuts to the app (zwift, MyWhoosh etc) but it does not change gear on the trainer, this is done by the app (zwift, MyWhoosh etc).
If it Bikecontrol could do this we will be able to use virtual shifting even with app that doesn't support it or badly, for example for me it works perfectly with Rouvy and Biketerra but virtual shifting in MyWhoosh is bad, I read on Reddit this is because unlike Rouvy, MyWhoosh have not implement the protocol but just virtually modify the gradient to stimulate gears.
Doing this it works on MyWhoosh with all trainers, even those without "real" virtual shifting support but it far from perfect.

[jonasbark]

Thanks, I got it!
I'm indeed working on something similar and will keep this in mind as well, although I personally never had an issue with my Zwift Hub One and MyWhoosh.

[jlaunay]

My trainer is the wahoo kickr core2, using BikeControl it works perfectly to change gears on MyWhoosh and others but the way MyWhoosh implement virtual shifting does not works well with this trainer, there is a big delay when you change, gears 1 to 12 doesn't change anything so when you ride in 12% you are stuck at 40rpm, gears 13 to 17 are "working" but the gap in watts is big, 18 to 30 is almost unusable even in descent (really to hard). I tried Rouvy and Biketerra and gears feel real, no delay, real intensity change, I can ride in 12% at 80rpm etc...

[povlhp]

I have a zwift ride with cog, using Biketerra or Rouvy I can use my zwift play to use virtual shifting (change resistance). It would be great to be able to do this with any soft not just Rouvy. I saw here they have done this using reverse engineering.

qdomyoszwift will generate a virtual trainer that you can connect to, and that will accept many different controllers. It was the go-to solution before Bikecontrol - and solves the issue of max 2 BLE devices on AppleTV.

QZ might work for you, as that interacts with the trainers gearing, and hides it from the software that connects to QZ instead.