In a move that will probably surprise nobody within the industry, Ironman has decided that owning an indoor cycling platform wasn’t really their jam. As a result, Ironman has sold off FulGaz to Rouvy. Meanwhile, Ironman has concurrently announced a new partnership with Rouvy, to be their indoor training platform partner going forward. Oh, and Ironman gave notice to all FulGaz employees (including its founder) as part of the sale, meaning those are gone shortly too.
Got all that? No? Don’t worry, it gets messier.
As a reminder, FulGaz is an indoor cycling platform that has real videos recorded outside that you can ride inside. Obviously they’ve got all the famous climbs and such, but also a massive library of some 2,200 videos within the platform today, including almost all of the Ironman branded races. Generally speaking, FulGaz was known for higher-quality videos (and streaming) than most of their competitors.
So, let’s talk about what happened, and what happens next.
The Backstory:
FulGaz has long held its place in the indoor trainer platform industry as one of the most polished platforms, while also tending to be one of the ones most on the cutting edge of technical implementations. When it came to hardware companies (like Wahoo) wanting to demonstrate new hardware (such as the Wahoo KICKR CLIMB), you’d usually find FulGaz at the front of the line helping these companies to do so. They perfected how to make the KICKR CLIMB simulations feel perfectly realistic, well before any other company did. Likewise, they were far ahead of the curve on Apple TV and other platforms.
(FulGaz in 2018, used in a private CES demo suite in Las Vegas, one of the first times the KICKR CLIMB was on display)
But they were also small, often in a good way. The founder, Mike Clucas, did almost everything for years solo-cup, and was still its leader now a decade later. The team eventually grew, both in terms of subscribers and employees – topping out at roughly 20,000 paid monthly subscribers.
Of course, FulGaz caught the attention of Ironman back in 2021. While everyone was doing the COVID thing, indoor trainer platforms were doing the peak-bubble thing. Companies were buying each other, and making offers for silly money. We saw Wahoo buy RGT, Zwift make an unsuccessful move for TrainerRoad, and Peloton printing bikes like candy.
Ironman decided to get into the game in the fall of 2021, deciding that they needed to have additional revenue streams (digitally based), given virtually nobody was racing in the real world. As you might remember, people were incredibly hesitant to train for a year for an Ironman event, with cancellation prospects high. In many ways, the move did actually have merit in concept. But as you’ll see, execution was tough.
After the acquisition, Ironman did start to invest into FulGaz. That occurred both in staffing, but also raising the profile. We’ve since seen FulGaz listed on banners alongside Ironman courses, in the finishers chute, and the endless e-mails the company sends.
The problem though was that triathletes are fickle creatures, and specifically, fickle creatures of habit when it comes to training (as a triathlete, I’m more than allowed to say that). Before the purchase of FulGaz, cyclists (non-triathletes) were the overwhelming majority of the base. Obviously, Ironman tried to change that composition through various promotional activities, but ultimately, it only peaked at about 15% of the total user base.
The challenge with that was that while Ironman was trying to change the demographics of FulGaz, they stopped promoting it within cycling-specific realms. Various in-game events/races that FulGaz would try with triathletes simply didn’t work. Triathletes wanted to get on the trainer, and do the workout as prescribed. Generally speaking, triathletes aren’t racing for the sprint or trying to conquer a col. Most of FulGaz’s events were about trying to knock out various sets of courses that didn’t really appeal to triathletes who simply needed to complete the structured workout on their calendar.
More challenging though to FulGaz, was the continual budget cuts it received. Each successive year would see fewer and fewer staff, and near-annual halving of the budgets. While nobody expected the 2020/2021 indoor training bubble (or budgets) to last forever, FulGaz is now at the smallest staffing level it’s been since before Ironman, despite being considerably bigger.
With Ironman largely hamstringing FulGaz’s non-triathlete growth, the platform mostly stagnated in terms of subscribers. Add to that secondary headwinds, such as the announcement by TrainingPeaks of the acquisition of IndieVelo. That announcement cut 10% of the FulGaz user base overnight. That make sense: Many triathletes don’t really care where they do their structured/coached TrainingPeaks workouts, they just want something that’s easy and mindless. This checked those boxes.
The Sale & Rouvy Partnership:
Recently, Ironman visited the FulGaz offices in Melbourne for the first time since the acquisition. It would also be the last time. Upon arrival, they announced everyone had been laid off (including the FulGaz founder), and the company’s remaining assets had been sold to Rouvy. Nobody within FulGaz expected this, or was aware a sale was even in the cards. Everyone has described it as being completely blindsided.
Concurrently, Ironman didn’t offer to Rouvy to bring the FulGaz talent/people as part of the acquisition. There was no prior due diligence done at a technical or employee level, as is customary in any acquisition. As a result, they’re now having to try and convince various FulGaz employees (who were already notified they didn’t have jobs) to stay on for temporary periods of time to help with the transition.
As part of the acquisition deal, Rouvy now becomes the Ironman online cycling platform partner for FulGaz. Presumably, you’ll soon start to see Rouvy billboards instead of FulGaz ones, in real-world courses. Plus of course, all of the usual Ironman partner marketing stuff. This is a 5-year partnership.
Athletes who sign-up for an Ironman or Ironman 70.3 race can also get a free 30-day trial of Rouvy, though, you can also get that by just using Google.
Going Forward:
So what happens to FulGaz users? And what about Rouvy users? Well, some pieces are clear, but a lot of that is frankly pretty fuzzy (largely due to how the sale went down). In short, here’s what happens:
1) Effective today, the Top 20 most popular FulGaz routes are now within Rouvy, including Ironman & Ironman 70.3 courses. You can do these courses today in the Rouvy platform, just like any other route you might have done.
2) The existing FulGaz apps remain online, though, don’t expect any further meaningful updates to them. Those apps will continue to work, but will be retired. Rouvy doesn’t have a timeline for when that’ll happen. Your subscriptions will continue, and you’ll keep paying for the FulGaz platform.
3) Rouvy still needs to figure out how to migrate FulGaz users to Rouvy. They say that once they figure that out, they’ll notify users on how that’ll work to migrate all of your stuff over.
4) Rouvy is working on migrating the Top 100 FulGaz courses quickly. This one is pretty self-explanatory.
In an e-mail with Rouvy CEO Petr Samek, he noted they see a lot of opportunity with FulGaz and the existing content, saying:
“We believe that the key is the content. We want to identify the missing content and migrate it to ROUVY (not only IRONMAN courses, I am speaking about cycling content mostly). Still, the majority of FulGaz users are cyclists. Also, we want to ensure the users migration as smooth as possible including the subscription, training/career status etc.”
Likewise, in talking with the founder of FulGaz, Mike Clucas, he noted that of the demos he’s seen using FulGaz’s higher-resolution/quality videos, blended with Rouvy’s augmented reality technologies, it was super impressive. And in an e-mail to all existing FulGaz users, he echoed that, saying:
“By moving the FulGaz content to its new home, I am confident that the ride experience I dreamed of creating at FulGaz will be realized by the team at ROUVY. Having met them and worked with them in our offices, I believe they have the team and resources to do amazing new things that I am confident you will enjoy for a long time to come.”
Of course, while FulGaz and Rouvy have overlap, they are also quite different in many ways. Rouvy has leaned far more heavily into online racing, overlays of augmented data atop real-world videos, and plenty more in that realm. Their refreshed apps over the last year have made things quite a bit better as well.
The key difference between Ironman’s acquisition of FulGaz, and the new Ironman partnership with Rouvy, is that Rouvy doesn’t have to solely pivot to focusing on triathletes. They still get to focus on cyclists, and now, get to give those FulGaz cyclists the attention they deserve again. Likewise, Rouvy gets all the valuable Ironman course content (and likely various licenses to film new content during race days and such), and can likely give triathletes more global course coverage than FulGaz had (including for other routes beyond Ironman).
That said, I’m still skeptical this will result in a large boost to Rouvy’s subscriber numbers. Or even a moderate boost. Ultimately, any digital platform that shacks up with Ironman faces the same problems FulGaz did: Triathletes are fickle creatures that prefer highly structured workouts from their coaches with minimal fuss. While Rouvy can deliver that in basically the same way that FulGaz did, it’s hard to argue with the value prop that TrainingPeaks/TrainingPeaks Virtual (aka IndieVelo) does, especially when it’s included in a subscription. As I said before, the TrainingPeaks acquisition might be one of the smartest sports tech acquisitions we’ve seen in a long-long time.
Still, if you were a Rouvy user, you’ve got the win of soon getting a bunch of new courses, especially Ironman-branded courses.
With that – thanks for reading!
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Why are capitalists assholes?
fair question.
Although what I am about to write means absolutely nothing, it also gets me first comment…lol. I just recently tried Fulgaz and I have been writing support because their sensor connections are horrible. Rouvy and Zwift, no issue, turn on my computer, turn on my trainer, everything is found, and I ride. Fulgaz it’s been a never-ending horror of launch app, re-launch app, power cycle trainer, reboot laptop, launch app, app freezes, relaunch app, close app sensors not found, relaunch app. I spend 20 minutes getting connected.
I told them I cannot possibly subscribe, and they need to figure out how rouvy and zwift handle connections.
Guess I’ll remove the injury pause I have on Rouvy
bastards, I missed first comment lol
Both apps are based on real videos recorded outside, so Rouvy has simply paid for the video gallery, the subscriber base, and getting rid of a competitor.
True. Though, as Rouvy is about to learn, getting people to move indoor trainer apps (and subscription payment plans/etc…), is *incredibly* difficult unless there is a big carrot. So while Rouvy will benefit significantly from the content (obviously), I’m skeptical they’ll be able to keep and migrate the subscriber base.
The thing is, FulGaz has been around a while. And Rouvy has been around a while. People that selected FulGaz did so for a reason (in the same way that people that selected Rouvy did so for a reason). No matter how good Rouvy is (and really, they’re doing super cool stuff), I think it’s going to be very challenging for them to retain even a majority of the FulGaz customers…without a lot of carrots involved. And I’d further argue that not putting those carrots on the table now was a mistake.
Long time FulGaz user here, and Ray has it *exactly* correct. I tried all of the various virtual platforms and ended up on FulGaz because it was precisely what I wanted. I have zero interest in virtual racing and competitive stuff; I just want something that’s a reasonable facsimile to riding outdoors with a lot of variety so I don’t have to ride the same virtual route twice. I’ll give Rouvy another try since I don’t have any other option, but I’m certainly worried that I’ll miss what attracted me to FulGaz in the first place.
Hi. Most Rouvy users aren’t racing and aren’t doing the group rides. If you want the most “clean screen” just ride experience in Rouvy, go to settings and turn off seeing other users and set your view distance to “me” to take your avatar off screen. You can also turn off gradient details. Now it’s just you, the scenery and the gradient.
That assumes there will be a willingness to learn and a real effort to keep those subscribers. I suspect neither will happen. They got videos, better quality videos than they offer. That’s all Rouvy will care about.
I feel sorry for those Fulgaz employess. Shitty situation to be in…
“Recently, Ironman visited the FulGaz offices in Melbourne for the first time since the acquisition. It would also be the last time. Upon arrival, they announced everyone had been laid off (including the FulGaz founder), and the company’s remaining assets had been sold to Rouvy. Nobody within FulGaz expected this, or was aware a sale was even in the cards. Everyone has described it as being completely blindsided.”
And then they have to come back and offer temp hiring to the technical people to make the sale happen. Honestly, at what point will enough be enough when it comes to corporate malfeasance? I think DC mentions a user base of 20K paying users. That’s a paltry amount and I can’t imagine they’ll move a sizable percentage of them to Rouvy when there is better marketing for Zwift (for cyclists) and integration for the Training Peaks Virtual service on TrainingPeaks (for the tri-folks).
As said, “why are capitalists assholes?”
Potential win for Rouvy users, bitter reality of “Big Fish, Bigger Fish” for FulGaz users….
After using Zwift for years, I moved to Fulgaz for several reasons. I like the real world videos better than Zwift’s virtual worlds, I’m not into the social aspect of Zwift (I can’t type/text while riding and I always ride alone anyway), and Zwift was getting pricey (although that isn’t a huge issue). Hopefully the Fulgaz experience will remain the same or even improve. But it seems these days that the “brains” at the top of these mergers think they know everything and just end up screwing things up. The fact that they dumped all the Fulgaz employees with no notice shows how little they care about people in general. It’s all about money. As one of those 20k Fulgaz users, I’ll stick with it as long as it doesn’t devolve or get too expensive. Fingers crossed.
I found both to be useful, FulGaz because the quality was high and Rouvy because there were crowdsourced videos which meant that I could see parts of the world that didn’t have professional recordings. That said, Rouvy’s quality was hit or miss (many crowdsourced videos should be taken down due to low quality, and the rides without videos seem pointless to me). I also really dislike Rouvy’s recordings where they use a car to do the recording, and therefore both the road position and the speed are not realistic for a cyclist.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens for those of us who have subscriptions to both. I was probably going to drop one or both anyway, so it will be nice to consolidate.
Ray, you’ve mentioned that FulGaz is one of the apps you keep in your arsenal – will you keep it that way until you’re forced to migrate on to Rouvy? Or do you expect to make the swap to Kinomap (or others) for your real-world-experience training?
I’m not sure to be honest. My wife was using FulGaz occasionally for Ironman course recon, though her upcoming 70.3 race in a few weeks isn’t on FulGaz, so she hasn’t used it much lately.
I did very much like the FulGaz family plan concept though, super handy.
I just rode out a trial of Kinomap and I’m in the midst of a trial of FulGaz when I received their announcement email this morning. I was planning on pulling the trigger for FulGaz mostly due to the family plan option, but now I’m not sure 😂
+1 for the family plan. I let zwift go in December because we could both use Fulgaz
For those who haven’t tried Rouvy in over a year, it’s a LOT better now than it was. I moved back to Rouvy when Zwift hiked their rates >30% and still didn’t offer a family plan. I was already bored with Zwift’s lack of addition of roads. Fulgaz was OK but honestly I was sick of all the Ironman content, hoping that doesn’t take over Rouvy now.
1. This has nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with Ironman, which is a terrible company through and through.
2. Don’t feel bad for fulgaz. Their founder mike clucas is a grade a arrogant jacka$$. Every interaction I’ve had with him was so shockingly unpleasant. Him selling to Ironman was a match made in he11. Now the tech guy clem, him you can feel bad for…
Clem is great.
Not sure I’d agree with you. Mike is pretty universally known within the sports tech industry as one of the nicest down to earth guys out there. Like, I don’t know anyone who’s *EVER* had anything even half-bad to say about him that’s met him in person.
…just my two cents from knowing him for a decade now at various events each year.
I really liked the small company feel of Fulgaz. Best customer service in the space by a long way. Gutted for the staff
I am a bit of the odd duck in that at one time I subscribed to Zwift, Rouvy, and FulGaz. I ended up dropping Rouvy once they dropped the running part of their app and I used Zwift for running and some biking, but loved being able to ride in places I hadn’t seen before. I haven’t decided what I’ll do when my FulGaz subscription runs out. And I will have nearly a year to decide because it just renewed a couple of weeks ago, but I having a feeling that unless things change in Rouvy, I’ll let my FulGaz subscription expire and just use Zwift since I can use it for both running and biking.
Very unpleasant move of Ironman, more and more I am starting to dislike the Ironman brand. I did contribute two videos to fulgaz and used it for some time, and it was a nice, friendly organization. Ironman is not. I strongly doubt if I ever again gonna pay the ridiculous fees to participate in one of their events. I even regret that my two videos now probably ‘belong’ to Ironman.
Lately I started to use trainingpeaks Virtual. It’s good enough for my use.
It now costs close to $AU600 to do a half Ironman race.
Back in the day, I got an entry to the now defunct Challenge Shepparton for something like $330. Even today, I can get an entry to Challenge Canberra for $410. $600? In this economy? I just can’t justify that sort of money, and I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do for general health and fitness – because the markers of races are just too expensive now. (Never mind travel, accommodation, and food costs.)
It’s price gouging because they can. Simple as that. And it doesn’t leave me wanting to sign up for another race.
Fulgaz was one of THE WORST cycling apps I’ve ever used. Ironman had no business in taking the lead on development. The only thing Ironman brought was the Ironman courses for training. I’m glad a more capable company like Rouvy has taken it over and it might be something ill consider subscribing to.
one key tech advantage for Rouvy over Fulgaz is Garmin upload integration. Fulgaz could not do that due to something with Garmin owning Taxc but unsure then why all other platforms can upload seamlessly. Only Fulgaz in my experience did I have to do a manual upload and after 3 times I gave up, cancelled Fulgaz, and moved to Rouvy.
Also, TrainingPeaks IndieVelo is great but its a virtual world and really boring. It won’t be free from what I read come spring but you would know far more than I do in that space!!
After a few years on Zwift, back and forth frustrations with Fulgaz on the integration piece, and a few tries on IndieVelo, I landed at Rouvy for the real world riding. So as a triathlete who likes to integrate workouts onto some scenery in the real world vs. gaming digital, this is a great acquisition. I just go into my workouts on Rouvy, select it and a course, and train!
I’m a long time FulGaz user and I’m so sad to hear of the mass sackings – they’re good people. I’m also a contributor with a number of videos on the platform. I got a new GoPro Hero 13 for Christmas and recorded a ride two days ago, ready to put up on FulGaz – looks like that’s not now possible.
I contacted Rouvy and have been accepted for the beta Route Creator programme. I was told they were aware of my videos and looked forward to seeing more from me which is good news. Hopefully I will be able to put up my recent ride on Rouvy.
Unlike FulGaz, in which your rides are processed by the company (not a fast turnaround by any means, except when submitting a priority requested ride ahead of an event like the Tour of Britain), you do the processing yourself in Rouvy. I think it is simpler because the Route Creator uses GPS data from the GoPro (Hero 12 owners look away now). FulGaz requires(d) GPS data from a separate file recorded on your bike computer.
I’m still waiting to hear if I have to take out a Rouvy subscription on top of the 11 ½ months I have left on my FulGaz subscription.
Rest assured I’ll do my best not to make my Rouvy rides look like a Roadrunner cartoon!
I’m with you, Ian. In fact, I’ve got a Hero 13 with one ride that was recorded on it and processed by FG. Maybe I’ll have to look at that creator program.
It’s hard for me to express how bummed I am about this. I’m into cycling more as a tourist than anything else. I have no interest in bike racing or any competitive aspect of riding. I just enjoyed being able to enjoy roads all around the world while feeling some of what it would be like to ride them IRL. Not only that, but I have just started being a contributor to the FulGaz ride collection. To be honest, at my age I find that I was enjoying my FulGaz rides more than places where I can ride outdoors these days (or where it’s safe to do so!). This also mirrors my professional experience, where once your company is acquired, you no longer have any control over its fate. If the parent company decides to dump you — personally or the entire company — you’re gone! Mike and gang, we hardly knew ya…
I suggest you give Rouvy a go – it’s really easy to use it to “just ride”. I’ve never raced in Rouvy and it doesn’t strike me as somewhere I would go to race even if I wanted to.
You may or may not like the Augmented reality angle – I do because it allows you to look around on some rides where they have filmed in 360 degrees. That is amazing for me when I am just riding – to be able to look left or right on real world videos
I tried Rouvy twice over two years. I found its video quality and ride simulation paled in comparison to what FulGaz offered. That’s why I’ve been a FulGaz member for 3+ years.
I’d be surprised if many FulGaz subscribers move to Zwift rather than Rouvy. They went to FulGaz for “reality riding” and Rouvy is the next nearest reality app (it isn’t really about racing and you can remove as much of the graphics as you want)
I was impressed with how FulGaz allowed you to really tweak its realism as much as you wanted and the videos were good quality but it got very buggy the last few years. Rouvy started off as the buggy, less finessed video option but has so improved its game in the last two years that I now subscribe to it and use alongside Zwift.
I’m hoping the extra realism controls from FullGaz get moved over to Rouvy
Ray has the needs and interests of triathletes just right. I was an annual subscriber to Wahoo X (a legacy from the Sufferfest days) and, despite a 30% discount when I did not renew in December, I chose to not resubscribe. Wahoo X just does not have the community that existed in the Sufferfest days – which was what attracted me. I also had a free year (?) of Zwift after the RGT shutdown. My Zwift subscription is currently paused and I don’t have any interest in resuming. Why? I’m a coached duathlete on TP and get TPV ‘free’. And it’s fine for what I need – marginally intersting courses while I’m bashing out intervals and watching biathlon on the TV. And if I want a change up from TPV, I ride MyWhoosh.(free ATM). I have no need and even less interest in paying more to train indoors. Duathlon racing is expensive enough. I’m buying a very expensive air ticket this week to get to Vigo for the Worlds in Pontevedra.
As a happy FulGaz user, I really am not in the slightest bit interested in any of the AR crap at all.
I just want to ride some of the 2200+ 4k video rides on the platform and take part in some occasional challenges.
There’s a proper community feel to the FulGaz Riders group on Facebook too.
The only glimmer of hope is the claimed integration with Garmin Connect which should save me the time of importing the emailed FIT files into Connect each time.
As one who rides almost exclusively indoors to train for outdoor adventures, the loss of FulGaz hits me hard. I have been on pretty much all of the platforms and I was on Rouvy for years. I decided to cancel Rouvy when I learned that it flattens the steepness of the hardest climbs. This “feature” is not documented and I only learned about it from a Rouvy ambassador. When I asked Rouvy tech support about it, they would neither deny that they did this nor would they specify where and when this grade manipulation happened. Now, since I use the online platforms to train for IRL rides and if the rides do not correspond to the real grades, it would be a poor training tool for me. FulGaz promised the real ride experience and an unsurpassed ability to customize the ride to your training desires. I will miss FulGaz. Perhaps this will open the door for another real life simulation platform that will give the real life experience we got from FulGaz. .
Ray, if ou were to now rate the indoor cycling apps, where do you think this will place Rouvy/Fulgaz compared to the Zwifts and such when looking at content, workout options, video quality, etc?
I see them as pretty different to be honest. While they are competing for the same bucket of cash in a household, the reality is that they cater to different wants.
As much as Rouvy aims to compete with Zwift head to head in certain races or sponsored events, I don’t think on the whole that’s driving the bulk of their subscribers. I’d wager that most of their subscribers are people that prioritize real outdoor videos, over simulated virtual worlds. Whereas inversely, I think the bulk of Zwift subsubscribers prefer the not-realism aspect of Zwift, as a step away from the real world.
I haven’t looked at Rouvy’s structured workout options too deeply recently, so I won’t comment on that at the moment. I’m fairly familiar with Zwift’s. And while Zwift is absolutely getting better in the structured workout realm, they could have substantially benefited from either a TrainerRoad or Xert acquisition for more of the automatic workout generation piece.
I swear I remember that prior to Ironman buying FulGaz and making it the official online platform that Rouvy had a bunch of the Ironman courses there. Maybe they never left snd just got renamed? The only time I used FulGaz was for course recon. There’s better apps for training. Maybe I’ll have to give Rouvy another try. Currently satisfied with Zwift and TrainingPeaks for racing, group rides, and structured training.
Maybe way-back when as part of the Ironman Club mid-covid thing?
Which, btw, I just re-opened that post for the first time in 5 years, dear god that was an amazing dumpster fire. I hadn’t thought about that in years. I even broke out the kids crayons for that.
For those wanting entertainment of the highest order: link to dcrainmaker.com
Yes, I believe this is what I was remembering. What’s old is new again I suppose 😅
So Rouvy acquired 20K subscriber accounts and tech debt to maintain without any staff? I wonder if that was their condition for Ironman or if Ironman moved first on laying everybody off.
I have seen good mergers and bad mergers up close, this definitely feels like there was little concern for the emotional impact on staff. Or on the subscribers.
Might be one of those instances of keeping an eye on this and see where it goes.
Not been a user of either so far. Enough with Zwift, TrainerRoad & Strava.
Still, if Strava doesn’t sort it’s shit out and stop alienating developers and the wider userbase they might ne the one to go and I’ll give Rouvy a try.
I feel for Mike. We had worked on a new feature behind the scenes that would load a distance based workout from BBS (with individual CdA, rolling res, wind conditions etc) based on any FulGaz course. Essentially you could race or train against your power plan for a course. This was first tested with USA Cycling athletes for Paris. While it was not quite ready for prime time it was a great simulation implementation. Bummed for Mike and the FulGaz community, though maybe something Rouvy would be interested in bringing over.
Rouvy is a janky and unpleasant interface with almost no data displayed. The “augmented reality” is a complete waste of code IMO. Rouvy’s marketing is a smarmy and they simply don’t listen to customers. There is feedback going back years about fundamental aspects of the app like video quality (pixelation, distortion, etc) that they’ve done nothing to solve.
Fulgaz was elegantly simple. I’ve done multiple centuries on it just zenned out like I do outside. I’m hoping I can at least get through this winter on Fulgaz but this will definitely be a negative impact to my training.
I have used most of them…started on Zwift…quickly left and did BKool for awhile. Went to Rouvy and rode that alongside FulGaz once FulGaz was ported to Windows (ATV drives me crazy). Loved the around the world scenes. Eventually left FulGaz because I had several rides in a row with heavy stuttering because the route went through towns with a lot of red lights. Super frustrating. Left Rouvy because I heard Zwift was getting better and Rouvy did not tell me if I had ridden a route previously. I also tried BigRingVR and I really liked that but seems most of the new rides are big mountains and I am a big old dude with no VO2. So back on Zwift. I have not tried Rouvy in a few years…may have to check it out. Again.
FULGAZ was the worst to deal with. i had never ending issues with connection. tried everything and it was constant connection drop out. laptop & dedicated pc. zwift, rouvy, mywhoosh have never had a drop out or not being able to find a device on bluetooth or ANT+. i paid for a year of fulgaz upfront and couldnt get a month use and had no partial,. full or any refund even offered after multiple emails and attempts. hopefully rouvy gets the best routes and gives them all augmented reality
I really couldn’t care less about Rouvy’s “augmented reality” features or their efforts to gamify training, riding indoors, or whatever anyone wants to call riding an indoor trainer. Fulgaz offered high-quality ride videos. I tried Rouvy twice over two years. Both times the videos were of lower quality
Rouvy will likely give lip service to integrating FulGaz users, but that’s all. There will be no real changes. So screw Rouvy and IM. There won’t be any app for people who don’t want a GameBoy experience but who do want a high-quality POV ride simulation such as what FulGaz offers.