My ortho also says to wear a brace as much as I want if it is helping. Bearing in mind that I have hypothesized patellar tracking issue (further to an impact injury) and my current brace is very low profile -- just a little collar/horseshoe thing that rests against the patella and keeps it on track-- so my muscles continue to work even with the brace.

Braces vary a lot depending on your condition and I can totally see that support braces or stability braces would have different roles in the rehab process per the remarks above.

Yes, cycling is a very knee friendly activity, generally, but unfortunately, I can't tolerate more than 20-25 minutes at the moment due to my extreme sensitivity to load. My bad luck to have a knee injury that precludes even knee friendly cycling. Hopefully this is temporary...

On the bracing/taping while cycling topic: I asked my PT about this today and he said that there is nothing that works due to the range of motion in a cycling pedal stroke. none of the braces or taping schemes tolerate that much motion, basically. rats...