CyCARLA is an open source cycling simulator. It pairs with smart indoor cycling accessories to offer the highest degree of in-game control and feedback, providing the ultimate interactive indoor cycling experience.
CyCARLA was created in 2021 by tensorturtle for a fun and imaginative 'future of cycling vision' demo by Boreal Bikes GmbH at the Bike2CAV consortium presentation at Salzburg Research.
In 2023, CyCARLA was officially adopted and re-written by Velovision Labs as an AI training and validation environment. It was crucial to the development of Velovision Rearview and its advanced computer vision algorithms. See Tesla's simulation presentation (YouTube) to get a sense of how CyCARLA is used at Velovision Labs.
This project is a free, open source fork maintained by tensorturtle, the original author of CyCARLA, with the goal of creating a superior, free, and modifiable alternative to indoor cycling games like Zwift.
Commercial indoor cycling games sacrifice graphics, control, and customizability in favor of compatibility with a wide range of devices. CyCARLA is different. CyCARLA requires a relatively high-performance computer, a smart trainer, and a smart steering plate. In return, CyCARLA offers unlimited freedom to roam the numerous maps and modify everything about the environment or the game itself.
To reiterate, you need the following:
- A bike, such as this absolute beauty
- Elite Sterzo front wheel steering plate.
- Smart Trainer, such as Elite Suito T
- A gaming computer (with dedicated GPU) running Windows 10 or Ubuntu 22.04. See more detailed requirements
Currently, you need to follow this installation guide to install three different programs. It will then show you how to launch them as a single Application.
Full instructions: see CARLA documentation. The following is an abbreviated, recommended way.
Download CARLA 0.9.15 pre-compiled ZIP for Ubuntu.
We'll create a new carla directory in the home directory to place CARLA content. This is used as the default in following steps so if you decide to change it, pay attention to when this path comes up later.
mkdir -p ~/carla
Go to where the ZIP was downloaded, assumed to be ~/Downloads and extract it to the new directory.
cd ~/Downloads
tar -xvf CARLA_0.9.15.tar.gz -C ~/carla
Please navigate to releases page and download the cycarla_agent appropriate for your machine.
Assuming it was downloaded to ~/Downloads, rename it to cycarla-gent and move it to ~/.local/bin, or somewhere else on PATH.
For example:
mv ~/Downloads/cycarla_app-linux-x86_64 ~/.local/bin/cycarla-app
Very similar to the previous step.
Download cycarla_app from releases, rename it and move it:
For example:
mv ~/Downloads/cycarla_app-linux-x86_64 ~/.local/bin/cycarla-app
First, move all three binaries to a directory in PATH, such as: ~/.local/bin:
CyCARLA App:
CyCARLA Agent:
mv ~/Downloads/cycarla_agent-linux-x86_64 ~/local/bin/cycarla-agent
Now, all three programs should be runnable just by typing in carla, cycarla-app or cycarla-agent on the command line from anywhere.
Next, we create a single script that launches all three simulataneously, and also terminates them if the script is ended by the user.
Create a convenient directory for this script:
mkdir -p ~/cycarla
Download the logo icon and put it in that directory.
Create a bash script:
vim ~/cycarla/launch-script.sh
With content:
#!/bin/bash
CARLA_PATH="~/carla" # default. Feel free to change.
cycarla-agent &
PID_A=$!
cycarla-app &
PID_B=$!
# Adopted from CarlaUE4.sh launch script
UE4_PROJECT_ROOT=$(eval echo "$CARLA_PATH")
chmod +x "$UE4_PROJECT_ROOT/CarlaUE4/Binaries/Linux/CarlaUE4-Linux-Shipping"
"$UE4_PROJECT_ROOT/CarlaUE4/Binaries/Linux/CarlaUE4-Linux-Shipping" CarlaUE4 &
PID_C=$!
# Define a cleanup function to kill both applications
cleanup() {
echo "Terminating applications..."
kill $PID_A $PID_B $PID_C
wait $PID_A $PID_B $PID_C 2>/dev/null
}
# Trap signals to ensure cleanup happens
trap cleanup EXIT INT TERM
# Wait for both processes (this keeps the script running)
wait $PID_A $PID_B $PID_C
Create a cycarla.desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications
vim ~/.local/share/applications/cycarla.desktop
With content:
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=CyCARLA
Exec=~/cycarla/launch-script.sh
Icon=~/cycarla/cycarla-logo-icon.png
Terminal=true
Categories=Game;
Make sure it's permissioned correctly:
sudo chmod 664 ~/.local/share/applications/cycarla.desktop
That's it! Now you should be able to see the CyCARLA App icon in the app menu. Click it to launch everything.
Download CARLA 0.9.15 pre-compiled ZIP for Windows. Other versions can be found here
Unzip it and find CarlaUE4.exe. Double click to launch it.
Right-click on the icon and pin it to the taskbar.
Coming Soon
Enjoy your ride!
Roaming about in CyCARLA - you can go anywhere!
CYCARLA accepts Pull Requests. If you have an improvement idea and have experience in Python / Javascript, please go ahead and submit and Issue. Let's discuss!
This is a personal free-time project. If CyCARLA helped you avoid expensive subscriptions and want to see it get better, please consider making a donation!
CYCARLA is MIT licensed.
CyCARLA is made possible thanks to the following open source projects:
- Unreal Engine
- CARLA
- Pycycling - major contributions made to this project by tensorturtle
CYCARLA is based Unreal Engine 4, a serious 3D game engine with full customizability, so it'll be more demanding than typical indoor cycling games.
- CPU: Intel Core i5 6th-gen or better.
- GPU: NVIDIA RTX 2070 or better (2080, 3060, 3070, 3080, 4060, 4070, 4080 etc.)
- Hard drive: 30GB of free space.
- Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) support.
- Internet connection required for installation, not required to run the game.
This project uses SemVer.
Since two binaries are distributed, they are related as follows:
- The two binaries must be compatible within the same major and minor versions (x.y._), where x and y match.
- Patch versions (0.0.z) don't need to match - they are used for bug fixes that don't affect the interoperability of the two programs.