I did my first MyWhoosh Ride on the 18th January 2023, so today is my First Anniversary of being a MyWhoosher.

My first rides were very much exploratory – I did 3 different rides just to get the feel of the Platform. Elephant Rock, Medellin City and 12kms of HQ Racing.

I enjoyed it and felt that as a Virtual Cycling ‘game’ it had potential.

Over the last 12 months, I have ridden MyWhoosh about 80 times, covering some 1,100kms of routes.

There were initially 4 Worlds, Arabia, Alula, Colombia and Australia. During the year a new world, Belgium was introduced, many more routes were launched for Colombia and Australia, and the routes for Alula were totally revamped.

I can’t remember the version, of MyWhoosh when I joined… possible 2 something however, we are now on v3.5.2 (and counting).

MyWhoosh has come a long way in the last 12 months, however, not all of it for the good of the Users.

From the start, the graphics have been awesome, they are excellently executed, vibrant and very realistic.

However, the Game is lagging far behind on usability. It is obvious that the money is spent in the Graphics Department and not on the Developers.

Many Users are finding the Game continuously crashes, they can’t download the programme, or they can’t run it even at low resolution.

Personally, I have only had the programme crash twice, once at the end of a short ride, and once at the beginning – neither were catastrophic and a restart sorted them both out.

The issue is, that the platform is so graphics heavy and if you do not have a decent Graphics Card, it will crash, some of the routes may not even load or it won’t run at all.

The Windows installation is just eccentric, no matter the size of the update, all 15gb of Maps and Routes have to be downloaded. Every time!

It looks like the Developers have never ever worked with a Microsoft programme installation.

A number of truly bizarre decisions have been taken over the last 12 months. For instance, up to the last but one update (3.4.0), you could ride any route, (from any World) on any day – truly Free Riding.

However, now it seems to be random routes on random days. There was a list of which routes (Worlds) were available on which days – now it just seems to be totally arbitrary which routes are open to ride. (The rationale, is to force riders on a smaller number of routes at anyone time, so that more ‘real’ riders appear to be riding.) How successful this has been, MyWhoosh won’t say…!

There are many, many bugs in the system. However, there is no system to report bugs. Reporting them via the Facebook Group, gets a bland reaction, “to pass it onto the Team concerned”

Emailing the Support team direct, gets absolutely no reaction at all. If you then try and find out answers, the social media team just say “We didn’t receive that email”.

The whole setup is very disheartening. They, the Management, do not listen to their User Base – the Riders – the MyWhooshers – and these are the guys (and girls) with the experience, these are the guys who put the sweat in, and ride the miles.

There is no Forum for any sort of discussion. Everything is done away from the Riders, and they have no input in the direction of the platform.

Updates, are very, very slow to materialise, and they are always promoted with a great fanfare about some new feature – but nothing about any bugs being fixed.

There are many arguments in the Facebook Group – that we (the Riders) have to put up with a few problems, “because it is FREEEE”. The consensus of opinion, is that yes, it is currently free, as is any Game in Beta Development, and unless we tell the Teams the problems, nothing will be rectified.

And there is nothing to say, that at some time in the future the game will not be monetised.

Overall, I think it is a great Virtual Cycling programme and a fantastic alternative to the other ‘games’ I ride.

My first year on MyWhoosh, has been enjoyable, but at times (very) frustrating.

I will continue to ride on MyWhoosh, despite the frustrations, as I think it will eventually come good.

It is a fantastic platform, that has the enormous potential to be a ‘game-changer’.

However, the teams in charge need to ‘up their game’ to bring about the break-through to mass participation, that all games need.

We’ll see how my second year of being a MyWhooser pans out.