New version 0.7.5.0 – Cheering crowds, auto shifting, self defense

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In this new version you’ll find

Cheering crowds

This part of the classic mod “Bicycle City” from Cassio Davi, was not included when I first merged it into GT Bike V.  Now, with Cassio’s blessings, I’ve included and fine tuned it.  This feature makes the climbs a bit more amusing by showcasing a crowd of supporters that will cheer you up while you overcome steep inclines . Even some photographers will take shots of your incredible performance!

Cheering crowds can be configured: activation and deactivation, minimum slope where they will start showing up and number of supporters.

Auto shifting

Let’s say you want to try virtual gearing but you don’t have any controller or keyboard handy. Or you want to feel how it would be like to have a bike that behaves like an automatic car. This is what auto shifting is designed for and you won’t find it in any other platform.  With Auto shifting the gears will change automatically as soon as you go above your training zone 5 or below your zone 1 threshold. As soon as you operate your gears manually it will change to manual gearing just in case you want to do an extra hard effort for a while. It will revert back to automatic after 10 seconds and only when you are back below zone 5.

There is a new menu for device settings where you can change the virtual gearing mode between no virtual gearing, manual and automatic.

Be aware the behaviour of auto shifting is tightly related to your FTP value, so try to have it configured properly.

Self defense

One common complaint of GT Bike V users was that at some points in the map bands of punks would harass the player to the point of becoming really annoying. Even though they are not able to kill you, they are relentless followers and will keep shooting at you.  There is a new setting in the configuration that lets you dial in your defensive level:

  • 0 (passive). The rider will behave like before version 0.7.5, doing nothing to defend himself
  • 1 (defensive). Anyone close by (50 m/ 160ft) that shows aggressive behaviour will instantly die or their vehicle will explode if they are inside one.
  • 2 (aggressive). The same as defensive plus anyone too close (5m/16ft) to the rider riding anything other than a bike will see their vehicle explode.

Default will be 1 (defensive)

Support for Zwift Click

Just like the mod started supporting Zwift Play controllers in a previous version, and thanks to the kind donation of a Zwift Click device from Matthew Gibbs, it now supports the Click for shifting.

Remember, this only commands GT Bike V virtual gearing, no the internal virtual gearing of Zwift Hub and Wahoo trainers.

Bug fixes

Some bugs that have been fixed in this version:

  • Disabled A D steering keys when mod is not active
  • Trainer braking on tight turns while in ERG mode
  • Russian localization was missing in last release

Other changes

The physics model for the virtual speed has been changed again to make it more responsive when sprinting and starting to ride and to make the virtual gears speed calculations more realistic.

A new extra key has been added for braking. This is in response to Zwift’s firmware update of their Play controllers where they have removed the “squeeze” functionality from the orange buttons rendering them useless as brakes. Now the brakes have to be activated by pushing the left orange button to the right.

There is a new menu for device related settings. For now you can change the settings for the trainer difficulty level, the road feel for Tacx Trainers and the virtual gearing set up.