Using BigRingVR
Sign in with Google Account
The first time you run BigRingVR, you'll need to sign in with your Google account. This only needs to be done once — all future sign-ins will happen automatically. Before signing in from the app, make sure you've created an online BigRingVR account using Google sign-in, or you may encounter an error.
You can sign in, sign out or check which account is in use any time in Settings → Account — click your profile picture at the bottom of the left bar.
Finding Your Way Around
BigRingVR opens in a single window with a bar down the left side. At the top: Home, Rides, Challenges and Training. At the bottom: your sensor lights (green while data is coming in — click to open Settings → Sensors), Theme (switch themes in one click), Updates, Feedback (Give Feedback or Report an Issue), Settings, and your profile picture (opens Settings → Account).
Configuration
Settings
Everything you can adjust lives in Settings, at the bottom of the left bar:
- General — units, theme, language, start screen (Home, Rides, Challenges or Training Plans), ride file format and folder, Re-run Setup Wizard…, Upload Logs to Support…
- Ride Experience — metrics layout and placement, map, points of interest, power zones, warm-up, multiple laps, interval beeps
- Account — sign-in, activity sharing
- Rider Profile — weights, FTP, Coach
- Videos — download region, quality, download folder, local video folders
- Sensors — your sensor configurations
- Trainer — SIM and ERG settings, Tacx Road Feel, elevation correction
- Integrations — Strava, TrainingPeaks, Intervals.icu
- About — version, Check for updates, open-source licences
Pair Your Trainer and Sensors
Open the sensor configuration screen — the first-run setup wizard walks you through it, or open Settings → Sensors (click Settings at the bottom of the left bar, or click the sensor lights just above it) and click Create New Configuration (ANT+ / BLE)…. BigRingVR scans for ANT+ and Bluetooth devices side by side, filtered to real cycling sensors, and you can freely mix the two — for example an ANT+ heart-rate strap with a Bluetooth power meter and a Bluetooth trainer.
- Smart trainer — pick your trainer as the smart trainer so BigRingVR can control resistance. Tacx NEO trainers appear over Bluetooth using Tacx's FE-C protocol; choose the entry labelled (Tacx road feel) for full resistance control and Road Feel.
- Power meter — pair a separate power meter here if you have one; use it for power while a smart trainer handles resistance, or on its own. With dual-sided power-meter pedals, pair the pedals here and keep your trainer as the smart trainer, so your power — and your left/right balance — comes from the pedals. See Left/Right Pedal Balance below.
- Virtual power — for a classic (non-smart) trainer, select it from the list and BigRingVR estimates power from the manufacturer's power curve. If your trainer isn't listed, choose Generic Fluid or Generic Magnetic and pair an ANT+ or Bluetooth speed sensor.
Name your configuration (for example "Tacx NEO") and press Save. You can keep several configurations. The sensor lights at the bottom of the left bar turn green while each device is sending data — click them to jump straight to Settings → Sensors.
Wireless Interference and Sensor Dropouts
ANT+ and Bluetooth both transmit in the 2.4 GHz band — the same band used by Wi-Fi, microwave ovens and most cordless peripherals. If sensors drop out mid-ride, or a trainer loses its connection, interference is usually the cause. Three things fix nearly all of it:
- Move the ANT+ dongle away from the computer. This is the single most effective fix, and it costs almost nothing. USB 3 ports emit radio noise across exactly the frequencies ANT+ uses, so a dongle plugged directly into a laptop — especially next to an external drive or a dock — is sitting in the noise. Use a short USB extension cable to put the dongle a foot or two away from the machine and closer to the bike.
- Use the 5 GHz Wi-Fi network if your signal is strong. Most routers broadcast both a 2.4 GHz and a 5 GHz network. Moving your computer to 5 GHz takes your Wi-Fi out of the band your sensors use entirely, and gives streamed 4K video more room at the same time. The trade-off is range: 5 GHz travels less far and passes through walls poorly, so if your setup is far from the router, a strong 2.4 GHz signal is better than a weak 5 GHz one.
- If you have to stay on 2.4 GHz, choose channel 1 or 6. ANT+ sensors transmit on a fixed frequency of 2457 MHz, which falls inside Wi-Fi channel 11. Channels 1 and 6 sit clear of it. Bluetooth is less affected — it hops between frequencies and can route around a busy network — which is why ANT+ sometimes drops out while Bluetooth sensors keep working on the same setup.
Also worth checking: keep the dongle and the sensors in line of sight of each other where you can, and avoid running a ride with a microwave oven going in the next room.
Rider Profile and Video Quality
In Settings → Rider Profile set your weight and your bike weight (road, gravel and mountain bike), and check your FTP — BigRingVR works it out from your rides, or you can enter your own. In Settings → Videos pick the Download Region closest to you.
Video plays in 4K, 1080p or 720p. Playback is hardware-accelerated, so most recent computers handle 1080p easily and reasonably modern machines handle 4K well. Rides available in 4K show a '4K UHD' badge in the Rides list. See the recommended requirements for details.
Not sure which to pick? Run the automatic test that measures your internet connection speed and graphics performance and sets the best quality for you (click Determine Web Ride Settings Automatically in Settings → Videos, or Run Test… in the first-run setup wizard). If video ever stutters, step down one level or download the ride first.
Smart Trainer Settings
You'll find these in Settings → Trainer. These settings only apply to smart trainers. Speed calculation is not affected by these settings — only the brake force applied by the smart trainer. These are very powerful settings to enhance your riding experience. Keep them at maximum values (±25%) for the most realistic terrain experience.
If you want to do intervals, you might want to set Maximum uphill to 4–5%. This way you won't need to shift gears when grades change and can focus on your interval power instead. Video speed is still calculated based on the power you produce, so it won't affect the realism of the ride. Triathletes will find this feature very helpful as it opens up many steep climbs for training. It's also great for recovery rides.
Setting Trainer Difficulty lower than 100% will decrease resistance on climbs and increase it on downhills proportionally. For example, if you set it to 50%, a grade of 10% will be communicated to the trainer as 5%. BigRingVR's speed calculations will still use the original grades, so it will not make you faster — you can think of it as virtual low gears. The default setting in BigRingVR is 100%.
Simulation
If you live and train at elevation but want to correct your power output to sea level, you can adjust the Elevation Correction percentage in Settings → Trainer. This creates a fair playing field for athletes riding virtually at elevation compared to athletes at sea level.
For example, if an athlete rides at an elevation of 2,100 meters (7,000 feet), the suggested Elevation Correction setting is 9% — so if the athlete generates 250 W, speed will be calculated based on 272 W (250 W × 1.09). Power will still be displayed and saved as 250 W; only speed is affected. Rides with elevation correction will be marked with an asterisk on the BigRingVR leaderboard.
More information on FTP in relation to altitude can be found in this excellent post by Joe Friel.
Integrations
In Settings → Integrations you can link your Strava, TrainingPeaks or Intervals.icu account. Every ride you save is then uploaded automatically as a FIT file to the linked accounts. Intervals.icu connects with your API key — paste it in and click Test Connection. Each Strava upload's description also shows the ride's Rings and your rider level.
Left/Right Pedal Balance
If you ride dual-sided power-meter pedals (for example Favero Assioma DUO), BigRingVR records how your power splits between your left and right legs, over both ANT+ and Bluetooth.
- Pair the pedals as your Power meter in Settings → Sensors. If you have a smart trainer, keep it as the smart trainer: the trainer controls resistance and the pedals supply the power. A trainer only measures total power, so balance can't come from it. If your pedals also report cadence, you can use them for cadence too.
- Over ANT+, dual-sided pedals appear as a single power meter. Over Bluetooth, some pedals can appear as two entries, one per pedal. Pairing only one of them records that leg's power alone and no balance — use ANT+, or set the pedals to a single combined channel in the manufacturer's app.
- To see it while you ride, choose the Training layout in Settings → Ride Experience → Metrics layout (it takes effect on your next ride). The L/R cell appears next to power a few seconds after you start pedalling, with the live split and your average underneath.
- After the ride, the End Ride summary shows an L / R balance tile, and the balance is saved to your FIT file, so Strava, TrainingPeaks and Intervals.icu show it too.
Single-sided power meters (one pedal or one crank arm) and smart trainers can't measure balance, so the cell doesn't appear for them.
Let's Ride
Home
Home brings everything about you together in one place: today's training session (with Choose a Ride), your scheduled rides, the top-rated rides you haven't done yet, your challenges and how far you are through each one, your recent rides (with Ride again and a link to the activity on the website), and what's new — new rides and BigRingVR news, which open right inside the app. At the top you see how many riders are online and riding now. Home also shows your Rider Level (level, stars and Rings) and Explorer (how much of the catalogue you've ridden), and each recent ride shows the Rings it earned.
Choose which screen BigRingVR opens on in Settings → General → Start screen: Home, Rides, Challenges or Training Plans.
Challenges
Click Challenges in the left bar for every BigRingVR challenge: those live now, those coming up, and those that ended in the past year. Open a challenge to see:
- its number of rides, total distance, elevation and difficulty, and its start and end dates;
- how far through the challenge period it is, and your progress — rides done out of the total;
- every ride in order: rides you've completed show as a green row with ✓ Ride again, and Ride it starts any ride straight from the challenge;
- the Challenge Leaderboard — Fastest and Distance, medals for the top three, and My position to jump to your own row.
Your challenges also appear on Home, and your progress updates by itself as soon as you finish a ride. On the website (top right) opens the same challenge on bigringvr.com.
Open Rides in the left bar. Type part of a name in Filter by ride name — "Alp" finds "Alpe d'Huez" and every other match. Use the filters at the top to narrow by country, elevation gain, difficulty index and estimated ride time, tick Downloaded only or Live riders only, and sort by release date, name, difficulty, ride time, distance, elevation gain, popularity or rating. Switch between List and Map to browse rides by location — on the map every ride is a pin, coloured by difficulty. Click a ride to see its profile and description, then click Select ride. To ride only part of a course, use Create new course to set and save your own start and finish. Every ride card and ride page has a ★ to add it to your favourites and a 🔔 to schedule it; scheduled rides appear on Home.
If your connection keeps up with the quality you've chosen (about 4 Mbps for 720p, 8 Mbps for 1080p, 16 Mbps for 4K), there is no need to download the ride — simply click the Select ride button. We strongly recommend trying live streaming before downloading, as it gives you many more ride options.
If your internet connection is not fast enough and you are getting "download buffer low" messages during the live stream, try Download: wait for the download to finish, then click Select ride. Once a ride is downloaded the button changes to Delete — use it to free up space when you're ready for a new ride. To see only the rides you've downloaded, tick Downloaded only at the top of the BigRingVR Web Rides tab. During the trial period you can download 1 ride at a time; with a subscription the download limit increases to 30.
To race against your previous efforts or other riders, pick them from the Activities list. Every time you save an activity for a ride, it will be added to the Activities list. You can pick up to 15 activities to race — the live ranking shows the riders nearest you, each with their name and time gap, with your own row highlighted. To race other riders' efforts, keep Enable Activity Sharing switched on in Settings → Account (on by default); with it off you see only your own efforts. Click Start Ride to ride.
On this screen you can also add a workout (Workout tab) or a Coach (Coach tab). The Coach paces your ride: set its power and it appears as a marker on the profile and in the live ranking — stay with it to hold your target. Raise or lower Coach power during the ride with the shortcuts below. When you ride a workout, the workout sets your targets, so the Coach is off.
Ride Queues
Want a longer session? Click Build a Queue on the Rides tab, then click rides to add them — they play back to back. Between rides a card shows what's next: press Enter to continue, Esc to end the queue, or S to skip the next ride. During the ride, press T to switch between this ride's figures and the whole queue's totals; a small 2/3 on the time dial shows where you are. At the end you see the queue totals; each ride is saved separately. When the rides join up on the road, BigRingVR offers to upload the whole queue to Strava, TrainingPeaks and Intervals.icu as one activity.
Keyboard Shortcuts
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| E | Turn on / off ERG Mode |
| ↑ / ↓ | Raise / lower target ERG power * |
| C | Turn on / off Coach |
| Q or = | Increase Coach power |
| A or - | Decrease Coach power |
| I | Pause / resume the workout |
| Tab | Skip to the next workout interval |
| Space | Mark a lap |
| L | Show lap stats (great for intervals) |
| Esc | End the ride (brings up the End Ride panel) |
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| V | Cycle profile and metrics panel display |
| P | Cycle profile: full / zoomed-in / split |
| O | Toggle transparent (overlay) profile |
| R | Ranking on / off (workout cues in a workout) |
| T | This ride / whole-queue totals (ride queues) |
| M | Turn on / off Map view |
| Z | Change map size: small / medium / large |
| F | Enter / exit full-screen mode |
| S | Take a screenshot of your ride |
| . / , | Raise / lower fixed power (free ride) |
Tip: press H anytime during a ride to show these on screen. Prefer the mouse? Right-click the video for a menu with every command — so you can ride without touching the keyboard.
To end the ride, press Esc. You'll see a full ride summary — distance, time, speed, elevation and power, plus Normalized Power, Intensity Factor, TSS, a peak-power chart, time in power zones and your leaderboard placing — and you can save a ride file (the format and save location are set in Settings → General — FIT by default, with an option to also keep TCX). If you've linked Strava, TrainingPeaks or Intervals.icu, your ride uploads automatically as a FIT file. If your heart-rate strap provides beat-to-beat (RR) data, your heart-rate variability (HRV) is saved to the FIT file too, ready for analysis in TrainingPeaks or Intervals.icu. With dual-sided power-meter pedals, the summary also shows your left/right balance, and it is saved to the FIT file as well. You can also rate the ride, add it to your favourites (★) or schedule it (🔔), which helps our community find the best rides and lets us give you personalized recommendations.
Training Plans
Open Training in the left bar for structured plans and workouts on real roads — every workout scales to your FTP.
- Plans — 18 plans in six categories (Getting Started, General Fitness, Build FTP, Climbing, Endurance / Gran Fondo, and Race & Event Prep), three in each from easier to harder. Open a plan to see it week by week, pick your training days, choose what happens if you miss a session, and click Start plan — BigRingVR schedules your sessions. You follow one plan at a time.
- My plan — today's session, your progress and the schedule week by week. Click Choose a Ride to pick the road for today's workout, or Skip to pass on it. You can change your training days at any time. On the website's My Training page you can also undo a skip for today's or a future session, and mark a session Done outdoors if you rode it away from BigRingVR — it counts as completed and can't be undone, so check before you confirm.
- Workouts — see below.
Your plan is the same in the app and on the website — see Training Plans and My Training. Training plans are part of a BigRingVR subscription.
Workouts
Workouts run in ERG mode on a smart trainer and scale to your FTP. Find them under Training → Workouts:
80+ BigRingVR workouts plus your own. Filter by name, type, tag, time, TSS or intensity, then click Choose a Ride
and pick the road to ride it on. You can also start from a ride: on the ride-start screen open the Workout tab
and click Choose Workout. To add your own .zwo, .erg or .mrc files, put
them in your Workouts folder (Documents/Big-Ring/Workouts) and they appear under Show → My workouts.
Build or download more at ZwoFactory.
Riding workouts is part of a BigRingVR subscription.
During a workout you can increase or decrease the target power by 2% using the ↑ / ↓ keys. To skip an interval, press Tab.
