Improve virtual gearing - allow more decreased resistance
Current virtual gearing is severely limited on the low end. With my mechnical gears I could be in 32t chainring and 32t rear sprocket, happily spinning up a 12% grade at 90rpm below my FTP watts.
With virtual gearing, with expanded range at 40 virtual gears, at -8 or the lowest possible gear, it's nowhere near the same experience. I have to be standing and grinding at 65rpm well above my FTP watts.
The help article admits this: "Virtual gearing is set up so that you can decrease the resistance a little but increase it a lot. "
Why can't we lower the resistance to simulate low gears like my 32t - 32t, or even lower?
Kade S-T
shared this idea
Many thanks for your suggestion, and support for TrainingPeaks Virtual.
The reason why the resistance can't be lowered is simply a hardware restriction of trainers. The way that trainers provide resistance (whether it's through friction, electro-magnets, or other mechanisms) don't work well at very low resistances and the manufacturers don't enable the resistance to be reduced further.
Once the trainer hardware exists to enable lower resistances, then TrainingPeaks Virtual software will be able to do that too.