Software for Turbo Trainer

Sounds like you want Road

Sounds like you want Road Grand Tour (RGT) – the paid for version will simulate any GPS track you throw at it with computer generated scenery as well as hill/resistance simulation via the smart training.

Works fine with Elite trainers too – although the resistance on/off can be a bit brutal, there is a small dip on the Canary Wharf track that I’ve ridden a million times which is a bit of a nothing IRL but you’d swear it was a 20% climb from the way RGT simulates it.

 I’ve used Bkool, Fulgaz and

 I’ve used Bkool, Fulgaz and Rouvy.   I like to follow scenic video routes and am not interested in racing.

For new users, check that your trainer is supported by the app, Fulgaz and Rouvy AR don’ t work with mine.   Also my turbo is in my garage where there’s is a weak WiFi signal, if you have the same problem you’ll need to download routes so they can be ridden offline.   Rouvy and Fulgaz have this facility, Bkool doesn’t.

The video offerings on all 3 are OK, but I preferred the selection on Fulgaz, but that’s a personal choice.   Bkool has almost 2 million routes to choose from and they don’t curate them so many are poor quality, boring and very similar.   However, they have some good ones if you can find them.   I also like their velodrome for the occasional bit of variety.

I found Rouvy and Fulgaz customer service very responsive, Bkool non existent.

Yes – it’s dead simple if you

Yes – it’s dead simple if you’re not bothered about the video. You don’t even need to download the route editor software. Just import a tcx file on the website and it will add it as an activity in your calendar. Then go to that activity and click ‘create route from activity’.

I’ve been using Rouvy for a

I’ve been using Rouvy for a while – tried a few and feature-wise it was my favourite. Plenty of real-life routes you can ride, and yes, you can create or record your own routes to ride, and attach video to them if you have it (otherwise you get a Google Earth type view tracking your route as you ride it).

A few things I’d note, though.

• Their software design, particularly in the route editor, isn’t the most intuitive. It takes a while to get used to where things live and how to do them.
• The video synching in the route editor seems to be chronically broken at the moment. The only way I’ve found to add new sync points is to repeatedly run the auto-sync (which you would think would remove all your existing points, but weirdly doesn’t), which results in a new zero-indexed point being added, and then manually edit the video time, save, re-open and edit the route distance. Which is a pretty tiresome workaround.
• The route synching service has had a couple of fairly major sulks recently – everything did appear to go through eventually, but took up to 2 days. (And I’ve just had another route update fail with an unspecified error and no clear way to fix it.)
• There’s a 12GB restriction on video file sizes, so you might be limited in the length / quality of what you can create.

As an alternative, Bkool also lets you create / record your own routes and add video, and their editor looks, from the demo videos, quite nice. I haven’t tried it personally, though, as I preferred Rouvy’s in-ride experience. I’ll be going back and investigating it soon, though.