Online cycling is all the rage right now, with a growing number of options from Zwift, TrainerRoad, The Sufferfest, BKool, Rouvy– and I’m sure some of you are still rolling the now-discontinued CompuTrainer.
While the name Cycligent Physical Esports might not ring a bell (or roll off the tongue), they’re the creators of the CVR World Cup, a very popular online race series that ran on the Zwift platform. Cycligent yanked the CVR World Cup in the fall of 2018, and are now introducing their own platform, called CVRcade.
What makes CVRcade different? First off, it’s totally free to register, download, and play. With Zwift and others costing $10 or more per month, that’s a big deal. It has wind from any direction. You can crash your bike. You can even participate without owning a bike or smart trainer. Though we can’t imagine it’s as fun as pedaling along with your friends, a keyboard or game controller will let you battle for position in the peloton.
Perhaps the biggest feature, however, is that you can compete for over $100,000 in cash at the CVR World Cup International event (requiring that you first compete and place in league events). That ought to perk up the ears of some aspiring young pro cyclists. Or gamers?
Here are the minimum system and equipment requirements, straight from CVRcade:
To play CVRcade, all players must have a computer (with internet connection) with the following required minimum system requirements. (Windows OS — Windows 7 64bit or newer.) (Mac OS — El Capitan (10.11) or newer.) CPU: Dual Core @ 2.0 GHz or better. Memory: 4GB minimum. Graphics: Dedicated GPU with 1 GB VRAM or integrated Intel Graphics 6000 or better. Hard Disk Space: 2GB. For playing on a computer only, all that’s required is a standard keyboard or game controller (recommended). To play and get the maximum physical cycling experience, you will need a road or mountain bike, Smart Trainer (Bkool, Cycleops, Elite, Kinetic, Racermate, Tacx, TechnoGym, Wahoo), Heart Rate Monitor (all models on the market that connect via ANT+ or Bluetooth Smart (BLE) using open standards), Ant + USB stick, and Cadence Sensor.
Once you’re set up, you can:
- Race as an individual or form a team.
- Design and create your own virtual world and build a custom track.
- Steer your bike with precision as if on a real track or mountain trail.
- Choose your lane to go around and accelerate past the pack.
- Draft other racers to save energy and take control when it counts most.
- Use specialized CVRcade-only “Power Up” strategies to gain an extra advantage.
- Invite racers from all over the world to compete race against you.
- Form friendships with other cyclists and gamers.
- Set the game to allow for crashing.
- Give participants the ability to watch each other race live, via webcam video.
- Ride across grueling gradients and through brutal weather storms.
- Choose to equalize racer’s power levels for even competition.
- Use in-game audio to communicate with other racers.
- Schedule your own private or public race event.
- You can also earn cadeCOINS by hosting races or qualifying to race live at the CVR World Cup eSports event, where thousands of dollars in cash and prizes will be paid out.
CVRcade is available for download at the link below. Now, if they’d just make it for the XBOX… (UPDATE: CVRcade reps alerted us that this is coming…)
