Does this bike trainer exist?

Originally posted by westernmustang86

hey guys. I'm pretty new to the world of indoor cycling. Two questions:

1) Does a bike trainer exist that integrates with software to look at Google maps and simulate user defined bike courses (elevation and distance)?

2) Does a bike trainer exist that enables you to virtually connect to friends online and do a group ride indoors? Preferably with a video game like avatar and road on a tv screen to simulate a group ride.

Not looking for something that necessarily has both features (although it would be nice) just one or the other.

Originally posted by westernmustang86 hey guys. I'm pretty new to the world of indoor cycling. Two questions: 1) Does a bike trainer exist that integrates with software to look at Google maps and simulate user defined bike courses (elevation and distance)? 2) Does a bike trainer exist that enables you to virtually connect to friends online and do a group ride indoors? Preferably with a video game like avatar and road on a tv screen to simulate a group ride. Not looking for something that necessarily has both features (although it would be nice) just one or the other.

Originally posted by westernmustang86

Thanks guys,

I've been doing a lot of digging and read through dcrainmaker's reviews. It seems as though kinomap is the only 3rd party software that both offers a virtual reality experience and controls resistance on select models of trainers. Tacx to me seems limited in that the're resistance controlled trainers only comply with their own software. Same limitation for the BKool. Cycleops has resistance controlled trainers that use both its own software or 3rd party (as per above the only 1 I know of is kinomap). KICKR also has this flexibility. The downside of the latter 2 trainers is of course the price. To me it seems as though software like tour de giro and zwift just accept data on power, cadence etc to integrate you into the Virtual reality world but don't have the output to change reistance on a trainer. This leaves the user to essentially manually change the resistance on their trainer if they have that capability on their trainer or simply just shift into a higher gear if they don't. Personally I'm leaning toward favoring trainers that accept 3rd party software to leave to leave the door open incase a certain piece of virual software really takes off and becomes more popular than the rest. The risk you run with committing to one piece of software ie in house from the trainer company is you log on to ride multiplayer and no other users are on to ride with because the software fell behind competitors. For me personally the ability for such software to control resistance on a trainer too is a plus so I don't have to do it myself to simulate hard hills etc. A trainer that can be resistance controlled can also be useful in that outside any virtual reality software, other software can be used that feeds elevation/distance data to my trainer and essentially simulates rides I would do on nice days in the summer here locally.

A lot of the above is just me talking out loud to try and make my decision. You experts out there please provide feedback if you can any let me know if I'm off base on any of my comments.