Great, I use virtual desktop client on my PC and the App on quest 2 no issues. I also put apple music on in the browser. And some times I throw up a show to watch.
Giant screen with zwift on it is awesome and HMD blocks out the world. Would really love a native VR app though.
Been a while but Iâm back on Zwift from summer break (Outdoor MTB is so fun!)
Yes Iâm using virtual desktop, easier to set up in that app then big screen. How has it been working for you?
The whole reason I posted this a few years ago was I found a VR biking app (Virzoom) for the PC. It was really fun but out grew it pretty fast (it was just a cheap training bike with no smart resistance) and then trying zwift on my vive HMD in virtual desktop and a smart trainer it just clicked. But still no movement on a Zwift VR app. Though quest 2 is selling like hotcakes and Fitness apps on it are doing pretty well. Oculus/Meta bought one the of the biggest fitness apps on the platform, Supernatural so they are doing a big push into fitness.
Hope someone at Zwift is listening.
If Iâm understanding this right, all I need to run Zwift in VR is an Oculus Quest 2, and use virtual desktop? Whatâs the experience like (I donât know what virtual desktop is)? Sounds like it just makes it look like youâre watching Zwift on a huge screen rather than a proper VR experience where you can look around - is that correct?
I tried the boxing game on my friendâs Quest 2 and sweat was definitely an issue (I sweat out 1 kg on a 1 hour Z1 recovery ride). It looks like you can get fans for the headset which might help though.
You also mentioned the HTC Vive. Do you prefer one headset over the other? Iâm also interested in driving/racing sims, so would like to get something that works with those as well.
I used Zwift for general fitness, not training for cycling. I find Supernatural on the Quest 2 to be so much more interesting and engaging than Zwift that I am unlikely to resubscribe to Zwift unless there is a VR option. The immersion makes a night-and-day difference; even the primitive VR cycling apps are a lot more fun than Zwift.
Agree, Zwift needs to get on the train. Maybe quest 3 or apple vision pro but VR is the next step indoor bike training
? Well, a great idea Chad, but thereâs been no growth in VR.
Outside, as I said years ago, a few niches like sim racing. The only games are tech demos.
And, what I said still remains - it wonât work for zwift because you sweat far too much when cycling indoors for the existing headsets. A pity because it would probably be far more immersive than looking at a screen - in the same way that sim racing is far, far more immersive in VR than looking at a screen.
But a lot of sim racers complain about the headsets because of sweat and theyâre not putting any effort in to drive.
Thereâs no point at all them spending VC adding VR to zwift
(a) 99.999% of their users would never use the feature - theyâre not going to buy the hardware required to run it.
(b) Of those that did use it the vast majority are going to stop after the first 5 minutes because theyâre vomiting into a bucket. It took a fair amount of time for me to get to the stage where I could drive in VR without nausea and specifically the effort and will to do that isnât common
i.e most users give up if they feel sick, take the headset off and donât want to play. Lying on a bed for an hour feeling sea sick is not pleasant because the negative effects of nausea last long after youâve stopped playing, especially if you ignore the first signs of nausea and keep playing.
VR developers for other games (i.e games that arenât sim racing) have to add a lot of features to let those users navigate around the games without triggering nausea.
The few people who make the effort are going to be rewarded, but they are the few - and in a game like zwift youâd have to acclimatize and develop VR legs, thereâs no alternative mode they could add. So youâve taken something thatâs a niche and now itâs a smaller nicheâŠand although Iâm among that niche I wouldnât use it because, as I said years ago :-
(c) The headsets are too bulky for physical exercise. The headset will be quickly ruined with sweat and that alone will lose another swathe of the tiny %age of people who tried it.
I can be difficult enough avoiding ruining thousands of pounds of bike when you cycle indoors let alone if youâre now breaking your VR headset.
So I predict youâd be left with, at most, a handful of users. Meantime, 4 or 5 years since I wrote that earlier post pretty much everything thousands of users have said zwift needs, zwift still doesnât have. Development in zwift makes continental drift look positively speedy.
i.e there are features that would benefit thousands or more of users that they havenât managed to implement since I last posted to this thread in 2019.
Zwift donât have a development team capable of doing this. They canât even do simple changes given 5 years.
To be fair though, no one else has bothered to write virtual cycling software who has any greater skill. Most of the other people writing virtual cycling software are slow and their software is lacking too. Zwift is probably about as good as virtual cycling software is going to get and maybe slowly over a decade or so theyâll eventually do the kind of incremental changes that mean things like a UI you can see on all the devices it runs on, and simple feature changes like that will be finished. Expecting them to start adding VR, advanced graphics, improving this and that is like expecting your local church cake bake sale to bake as many cakes as Mr Kipling. Theyâre well meaning amateurs, and you can enjoy their slightly out of shape brownies and rock cakes.
Since there arenât millions and millions of people who want to cycle indoors anyway, no one else is going throw a ton of VC creating another zwift. Thereâs no market for it. This is it.
Itâs a great idea that not enough people really want to make it possible, but itâs nearly been made possible.
I donât sweat when Iâm doing easy rides on Zwift.
Everyone is different - I could use a VR headset without problem for Z2 and it would be less boring.
Are you Prince Andrewâs lawyer?
I can sweat standing still⊠whats your point?
Theyâre really not. Everyone sweats. Even Prince Andrew.
And youâre most definitely sweating at z2.
Really if youâre bored riding and arenât sweating then you may as well just go and do something you enjoy - because youâre not exercising or improving your fitness.
If you donât like VR and itâs obvious you donât (assuming it was developed) then just donât use it. I know new Zwift features are a matter of life and death but this is going too far.
What next, youâll be telling me to get some exercise? Or telling me how to improve my fitness (when Iâm already fit). 
I can imagine the warranty coverage conversations, lol.
Chris, the feature would make no sense for the reasons I gave.
Saying you donât sweat in response is like saying youâve got 3 legs after someone says that making trousers with 3 legs isnât a good idea because people are bipeds. You sweat like everyone else, and if you didnât you need to go to hospital because not sweating and exercising is a really bad idea. Google anhidrosis.
The point about discussing features I think is because they cost some time and effort to implement and the higher that cost the more people would have to benefit from it. Otherwise it would make more sense to fix or improve something else right?
And thereâs a ton of stuff that needs fixing and improving. You know if you want to buy a new shiny ipad and play zwift you probably want zwift to take advantage of the modern hardware right? Not look the same as the iphone 6. I couldnât believe that this isnât the case. They need an Elon Musk to go in and sack everyone in their development team that canât explain in 20 words or fewer what they do and why itâs not the correct thing to be doing.
Whatever, this particular feature is really expensive but vanishingly small number of people would use it - and as this isnât a large, dynamic development team I donât think itâll ever see the light of day.
Zwift is about a decade old? Well theyâve not implemented some very simple changes and improvements that would take a few hours to code and practically everyone has been asking for and certainly significant numbers would benefit from during that decade.
The only interesting thing about the topic were, as someone who posted to the thread years ago and then came back to zwift, re-reading some of the predictions people made about VR that obviously were never going to be the case.
But, you know if Iâm wrong and zwift do add it, well then youâll have it. If they donât add it and you think Iâm wrong and you believe a VR-based virtual cycling game will be hugely popular then develop it or pay for it to be developed. You can bet that if someone else wrote virtual cycling software that a significant percentage of zwifts customers started switching to, theyâd actually do something. Right now they donât have to and, unfortunately for us that means the software sucks - itâs just thereâs not a lot of other choices. In fact Iâd suggest the fact thereâs nothing else means people donât realise just how much it sucks.
But thatâs the thing - pretty much everyone else who has thought they can do better than zwift hasnât done anything - and zwift arenât doing that well in the first place. So maybe invest your money in nvidia stock.
Zwift has its own priorities. What you or I say makes no difference.
Nor does your apparent interest in disgraced Royal family members.
Exactly. So why sweat it then? (especially when you canât)
As for Prince Andrew the reference is because he rather infamously said he couldnât sweat , imagining that weâd all nod and believe it.
You might not sweat noticeably at Z1/2 but I bet the experience will be quite different when your face has big blobs of foam/rubber/whatever lying straight against it.
I been waiting for this for years. The point about sweating is moot, lots of people use the quest for fitness and exercises, things like holofit, les mills and many others are work out apps to make you exercise and sweat in VR and there is a growing list and demand, holofit does offer bike riding but it is no zwift, unfortunately zwift is missing an opportunity that i hope someone else picks up and fills the void.
It still would be nice but on macOS there is no point because there is no driver support for any of the mainstream VR headsets, only the overpriced Apple one.
I wouldnât use VR for flat out rides, but for the slow and boring easy rides (especially in winter time) it would be great.
There are however better things to do first like expanding the mountainous routes in Watopia.