I would really like to see an ‘Advanced Team Car / DS Car’ option for team captains / DS to better coach their teams:
- Controlled and set up in the Companion app.
- Option to select multiple team members to follow with team car
- Fixed / default DS camera view + optional camera settings.
- Dedicated DS / Team Captain setting in Zwift + Companion sign-ups to races as DS but not as a racer. Once signed up as DS / TC, you can’t join the race and only able to chat with team.
- DS Dashboard / HUD settings. Being able to view selected team members with a customized overview/HUD i.e. watts, w/kg, avg speed, distance/time to leading group / leader, distance to go.
- Timer on HUD that allows DS to start timer for a team member and track power accordingly. For example a DS might want to give instructions for a breakaway; “push 400w for 60s, go” and have an accompanying timer to track this.
Extra features to consider:
My #1 wish as a DS would be to just get rid of the camera rotation whenever you switch riders you follow. Just stay in the same view as before. There is a feature request specifically about this: Maintain camera view switching between riders
A close second is the weird bug where you for some strange reason can’t fan view a particular rider from that rider’s profile in Companion. In practice this means you can’t enter the event at all. Some of the time this seem to resolve with force quitting and restarting Companion, but not always.
Agree that switching between different riders is quite messy at the moment, the positions can change quickly and the nearby riders list is so short that it takes umpteen clicks to move from one end of a peloton to the other (I use an iPad as a second DS screen in part simply because the list is longer and easier to handle…), and if you are unlucky, you end up following a lapped/dropped rider, and if you are really really unlucky, an intersection comes between the groups just when you are watching the wrong group so that it becomes impossible to go back to the peloton other than via a rider profile in Companion.
As for TTT-specific DS functions, maybe first get the event itself sorted out (start, drafting), before dealing with such niceties. (And if you really want to go down that track with timers and everything, why not TTT ERG mode as well while you’re at it? ;p )
Today we do not have a DS functionality at all. We have fan view, full stop. It wasn’t built for coaching, meaning I’m quite forgiving for its flaws when used during races.
The DS function would not have to be super advanced to begin with, small steps would go a long way 
Obviously fan view was originally developed as just a toy/demo function to get a user to see graphics moving in a world without a power/speed source, but now it is how DSing is done in this sport, so it needs to be taken more seriously as such, even if no new DS UI is going to be developed.
Hello Zwift
we need a better TC function, the racing are great but we need a better platform for our captains. We need our own spot in the pen. The fan view isn’t good enough.
2 Likes
We ned a better platform for our TC workers fan view isn’t good enough.
totally agree, the annoyance of trying to get to the right world locate a rider in the pen is a pain.
it would be nice if all events had an extra signup just for fan viewing and fix the rider list that breaks every time the group passes a junction.
