New Features for the 2024 Open Water Season
We’re excited to release our first software update since the launch of our Smart Swim 2 goggles on April 2nd. As part of this new release, we have a couple of feature updates for all you open-water swimmers and some fun new experiences for pool swimming too.
SwimStraight™
As we are in the middle of open water swim season, now in full swing here in the Northern Hemisphere, we wanted to get some quick updates out to take full advantage of the great swimming weather. Our new features are as follows, with further details below:
- New Open Water Real-Time Pace metric
- Support for Apple Watch bilateral breathing
- Swim Celebrations
We also have more updates to come this summer! Be on the lookout for improvements to SwimStraight based on your feedback.
Introducing Real-Time Pace
The first new feature is a new pace option for Open Water swimming. We’re calling it Real-Time Pace and it’s a more responsive pace metric, sourced from your Garmin or Apple Watch, and is shown on the goggles. This will allow you to get a ‘live’ pace as you swim compared to our Workout average pace.
Being that this new Real-Time Pace metric comes directly from a compatible watch, FORM is not altering this value at all. We’re simply taking the GPS-watch sourced value and putting it in your eye where you can see it for the entire swim. Establishing a GPS signal, especially establishing a GPS signal in water, is susceptible to interference and noise from your surroundings, which can impact the values you see in your goggles while you swim.
Garmin has some suggestions to support getting the best GPS quality you can while open water swimming at this link.
Note: Apple Watch does not appear to have a similar reference to Garmin but it is reasonable some of these steps would help with an Apple Watch maintaining GPS quality in open water as well.
If you’ve been waiting for a more responsive pace when swimming in open water, this is something you can try and see if it fits your needs. We will continue to work on improving our current open water features while building new ones so please share any feedback on how we can make any further improvements!
Bilateral Breathing Now Supported for Apple Watch in Open Water
We’re excited to share there was a big change to watchOS 10+ Bluetooth settings that has enabled us to build a stronger connection with FORM goggles to Apple Watches for open water swimming. With this improvement, we’re pleased to say that we’re now able to support bilateral breathing when using your FORM goggles with an Apple Watch.
Bilateral breathing is still supported with all compatible Garmin watches and FORM goggles, there are no changes.
Swim Celebrations
We know you put a lot of effort and determination into your swimming and we want you all to be able to celebrate that. It takes a lot of work to even show up to swim, let alone jump in the water and go back and forth following that black line, or open water swim in oceans, lakes, rivers, reservoirs, you name it.
Today we’re launching a range of celebrations to champion your accomplishments! We’ve also thrown in some educational items to let you know if HeadCoach™ has noticed any changes in its analysis and suggestions based on your swim data.
These won’t necessarily happen after every swim but as you accomplish goals and experience score improvements, you’ll see these pop up in your app. Keep an eye out for them with this new update.
