<story><title>One man’s quest to end cheating in virtual cycling</title><url>https://thehustle.co/one-mans-quest-to-end-cheating-in-virtual-cycling/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xyzelement</author><text>I think if you go into virtual biking expecting some sort of exactness - and if there&amp;#x27;s money&amp;#x2F;fame attached, you are just set up for disappointment.&lt;p&gt;A while ago I noticed that all my Peloton PRs happened on the bike at my in-laws gym, not on my own bike. Clearly there is a calibration difference between the two that majorly advantages the in-gym one. And obviously every rider&amp;#x27;s bike is different so that person ahead of you on the leader board might be putting out less output than you are. But who cares?&lt;p&gt;I was repairing my Peloton the other day and getting inside made it really obvious how else you can manipulate it if you really cared to. And maybe some people do but again, who cares?&lt;p&gt;The two numbers that matter are; your weight and perhaps the comparison on output between yourself today and yourself some time ago. Anything where you attach significance to comparison between your number and someone else&amp;#x27;s, you are in trouble. Somehow the culture on Peloton is such that people don&amp;#x27;t get into that. Maybe because social interaction is blissfully limited to high fives and following someone&amp;#x27;s class history.&lt;p&gt;This system of competitive e sports on temperable equipment was sort of latent with disappointment from the start.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sjfidsfkds</author><text>The trainers used by many people on Zwift (eg. the Wahoo Kickr) actually read out pretty accurate power numbers.&lt;p&gt;The classic Peloton is basically a mechanical device with sensors attached - and none of those sensors are a power meter. The power estimates are widely reported to be inaccurate (they exaggerate output to varying degrees). On the other hand, the Kickr precisely modulates resistance and is able to accurately estimate power. I believe the newer Peloton Bike+ has a better system that produces accurate power readings as well.&lt;p&gt;Of course, as long as the competitors are bringing their own hardware, there will be ways to fake the data. I’m just pointing out it’s possible to measure power accurately and hardware that does it is widely available.&lt;p&gt;Personally, I find power readings to be useful because they help me understand the effort of cycling in different conditions. I can compare the readings I get in my garage to those from the climb up a steep mountain road, or into a gust of wind. Measuring my training based on my power output has helped me to go have experiences that I couldn’t have before.</text></comment>
<story><title>One man’s quest to end cheating in virtual cycling</title><url>https://thehustle.co/one-mans-quest-to-end-cheating-in-virtual-cycling/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xyzelement</author><text>I think if you go into virtual biking expecting some sort of exactness - and if there&amp;#x27;s money&amp;#x2F;fame attached, you are just set up for disappointment.&lt;p&gt;A while ago I noticed that all my Peloton PRs happened on the bike at my in-laws gym, not on my own bike. Clearly there is a calibration difference between the two that majorly advantages the in-gym one. And obviously every rider&amp;#x27;s bike is different so that person ahead of you on the leader board might be putting out less output than you are. But who cares?&lt;p&gt;I was repairing my Peloton the other day and getting inside made it really obvious how else you can manipulate it if you really cared to. And maybe some people do but again, who cares?&lt;p&gt;The two numbers that matter are; your weight and perhaps the comparison on output between yourself today and yourself some time ago. Anything where you attach significance to comparison between your number and someone else&amp;#x27;s, you are in trouble. Somehow the culture on Peloton is such that people don&amp;#x27;t get into that. Maybe because social interaction is blissfully limited to high fives and following someone&amp;#x27;s class history.&lt;p&gt;This system of competitive e sports on temperable equipment was sort of latent with disappointment from the start.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dktp</author><text>I think people are overblowing his investment in making it competitive&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s quite easy to cheat in Zwift as you can put any weight on your profile (and the metric for measuring speed is generally W&amp;#x2F;kg). As well as different trainers have different power measurement accuracy, etc&lt;p&gt;But to some degree Zwift and other 3rd party Zwift race-tracking platform find the cheaters based on outliers and other factors and remove them from the list&lt;p&gt;All he did is figure out a way to cheat which should be simple to detect by the platform itself (changing weight mid-ride -&amp;gt; ie make yourself lighter uphill and heavier downhill) and demonstrated it. And he got banned for it&lt;p&gt;The way I see it, it&amp;#x27;s the same as someone demonstrating an LLM prompt injection or a cheat in a video game. A geek hacking a thing they like and showcasing it</text></comment>