Allow plugins for Zwift to enhance end user experience

I’m thinking it would be a pretty phenomenal idea to allow the use of 3rd party plugins in Zwift. When you think about it this makes a lot of sense. The most popular multi-player games over the years have allowed user customization and plug-ins to individualize the user experience and create more devoted following.

The fact is, eventually Zwift is going to have some serious competition. Creating ways to further tie someone in at a deeper level by allowing the community to create their own tools and experiences would be a huge step towards that possibility. I mean imagine how it would be if others created their own texture pack. You know racing a peloton full of actual honey badgers would be pretty entertaining.

Possibilities of things that can be developed without Zwift having to spend any extra manpower:

  • custom route generation
  • Alternate texture maps
  • Customizable HUD
  • Alternate map views with content filters (only see our friends or those in your race class)
  • Color pallet modifications
  • Customizable onscreen icons
  • combined/average times for teams in bike races
  • interesting powerups (I imagine this one would have to be locked down to a schedule event, but people are creative and some really fun ideas could be had like teleporting, jumping and of course Battlemode with rockets launchers smoke clouds and oil spills)

If something turns out to be good and popular, incorporate it into the actual game and give the developer some props/reward. Anyway, just thought I would throw that one out there because you know … honey badgers …

This is an Awesome suggestion. In the beginning there was a lot of developers the would “hack” for a lack of a better word zwift. They created a lot of very nice tools. That is actually how Zwiftpower started.

There was talks about and API that developers could have access to but that never happened. there was someone that made a web page where you could see all the small groups that formed in a race and see the distance between groups. Zwifthacks.com created this awesome map that you could have on your second monitor or overly on zwift, you could see where on the map your friends was.

I think this can help Zwift grow and that without any effort from zwift.

2 Likes