Bike upgrades?

General Discussion
1

Got a question about the bike upgrades.

In game I use a frame that can be upgraded. I have already unlocked all 5 upgrades for the frame. I have also selected the DT Swiss ARC 1100 Dicut 65 wheels, which according to Zwift are one of the two most aero wheels available in Zwift.

Here’s the question: All of these upgrades should be worth some marginal gains that result in reduced watts required to propel the bike along. Lets say for easy math that all of the upgrades I have obtained are worth 10 watts. I routinely ride with pace partners, most commonly with Maria. When I ride at 2.2 watts/Kg that equals 165 watts average output for me. Now I have acheived all of the frame upgrades, and have purchased all of them. I also added the “most aero wheelset”. Why is it that my average power output over any distance ride with Maria is unchanged? Any ride with Maria still averages between 165-168 watts for me. If I have added all of these marginal upgrades, why is that not reflected in my average power output for rides with a pace partner? As I said earlier, for simple math let’s assume I have a 10 watt advantage. When I ride with Maria, my average power when I am done with the ride should be 155-158 watts because I have all of these marginal upgrades. But that is not the case.

So am I correct that these upgrades really are not upgrades to the experience in Zwift???

2

This post details the W savings you should see from a fully upgraded bike vs the same bike with no upgrades:

3

Dont think you will even get a 10 watt gain at the 160 watts you are doing with the robopacer. If I see the graphs on the link that Aaron shared correctly the gain is max 10 watts when you are doing 300 watts and weigh 75 kilo. You are doing about 50% of that so the gain, as said in the article, will also drop to 50%. So you gain a max of 5 watts through the upgrades. Do include some error margin in the testing and perhaps there are 2 to 3 watts left you gain.

The numbers tested by Zwift Insider dont mean that much when they only test it on 2 routes and by solo riders. It is a indication, but in no means hard facts in races or group rides where there are more things that influence your watts

4

Drafting in a group you can absolutely waste watts with the “new sticky draft” that keeps you from passing a rider unless you’re doing enough watts to go faster than them without draft. There are small gains from the upgrades, but there’s a bigger difference in how you ride within the group. If you’re averages are within 3 watts I’m guessing that you’re just riding to that power.

5

Eek! :face_with_peeking_eye:

With the bike upgrades, at least with halo bikes like the R4000 or the Project 74 I see benefits on downhill sections where they are quite fast. Particularly road-to-sky route on the downhill bit towards the Jungle (just after the start). I have both of those two bikes at level 1, but not the Pinarello yet.

The sticky draft is probably going to impact the results more. Try passing someone normally, then steer away from them and try passing, you’ll zoom past a lot more easily. The sticky draft isn’t new, it’s been a thing for quite a while, but it seemed to be tweaked at various times - sometimes stronger, other times less so - but we don’t know much about that other than our observations because it’s all top secret stuff.

6

What Craig said; in LARGE pace partner groups, you might not see a huge advantage, it depends on sooooooooo many factors. How many people are pulling the bot (or braking it?) has always had a greater impact than anything else, and continues to, to this day.

If you go to some of the “off-brand” worlds and find your RP with almost nobody with them, you can get more clear results.

For example: I typically cannot ride with Jacques, however on London last night, I sat with him just fine for almost 2 hours, near solo the entire time, averaged and normalized at 2.8w/kg.
If I join him on Watopia with 20+ people it fully requires 3.2+ w/kg because of pullers and also constantly being pack braked.

Bike upgrades are for sure significant in the right scenarios; sitting in a large blob however, the noise level is too high to see much difference (UNTIL you choose something mega slow).

So with that, ride the Buffalo or Safety with classic or the buffalo wheels, and see how much it increased your average; it may not be a huge amount w/kg wise, 0.1, 0.2 tops, but you’re far more likely to see it increase from the slowest of the slow, than with some average road frames.

These upgrades are very dramatic however in low person groups, or solo.

7

I read the Zwift Insider article posted by Aaron, and according to that article, I “should” be seeing a 6 watt benefit on the bike frame I have.

There does not appear to be any quantitative tests of the DT Swiss ARC 1100 wheel set to define any wattage benefits from using those wheels. There should be, considering Zwift claims that they are the second most aero wheels that can be used in game.

Even ignoring the wheel set, my argument still stands: if the upgrades have provided marginal gains, I should realize those gains every time I ride in Zwift. Doing pace partner rides with Maria as I routinely do, my average wattage for a ride should now be 159-162 watts, not still 165-168 as it has been in the past. If my bike now has a 6 watt advantage, and I am riding with the same average wattage with Maria or any other pace partner, over the course of the ride I should be slowly riding away from the group. My pace partner rides in Zwift are typically 25-35 miles (40-56Km). Over that distance a 6 watt advantage should be seen in my average power output for the ride, the average power for the ride should be lower than it was before I got all five upgrades.

I do not buy the argument that the advantage is only realized in very specific riding situations. Zwift might have modeled it that way, but in real life, any advantage that saves wattage will apply in any and all riding conditions.

8

And what’s the noise level of ground speed and elevation compared to… what you’re comparing all of this to?

Again, you’re talking about an extremely noisy testing scenario where literally everything that can be different, is different, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.

You can not compare results with RP’s because there’s no quantifiable data on number of users blocking, or pulling them.

As stated now three times, you’re seeing similar data because you’re being brake checked in group rides, wasting watts. Sit at the back of the pack and go as light as you can while holding wheels, and you WILL see those gains, but good luck, it will not be a steady ride…

I can assure you the benefit is there, as it was extremely apparent when I enabled the aero socks the other weekend, but… that was with a very high paced group of <15 people going 3.4+ w/kg

You don’t have to “buy” the argument, because it’s not an argument, it’s factual. The data from Eric is from bots in empty testing fields, experiencing zero draft, and zero braking.

Get on a Tri bike, do a forced ERG power for some period of time, fully upgrade Tri bike while not changing wheels, and see how much more distance you covered.

Do note that even on a Tri bike you’ll experience some noise in the data due to auto steering, it won’t be a lot of noise, but it’s more than nothing.

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9

Just to prove a point, here is my 30s average power with Jacques last night on London Classique, you can see that even across the board the average ebbs and flows.

Where is that noise coming from?
That’s coming from people joining and leaving the RP, forcing me into the wind or braking me.

The final 1/4, or lowest average here, is when I was alone with Jacques completely. RP’s are not consistent, and people joining and leaving alter averages a significant amount.

image

I could break this data out lap by lap, but I won’t have a clear idea of how many were in the group or not… but it should be very apparent that the far right 1/4 of the image is quite a bit lower in power than the far left.
If I recall, the group at maximum only got up to maybe 5 people at a time, majority was with one othe person, but that final bit as stated was solo with the bot.

For the heck of it, I split out rough laps (this isn’t perfect but just for actual number’s sake) at roughly 8.5 minutes, just going off my spikes for the climb portion, so not actual lap points, but… close enough for our use case here. Normalized in parenthesis.

  1. 176 (177n)
  2. 175 (177n)
  3. 174 (175n)
  4. 169 (170n)
  5. 173 (175n)
  6. 175 (177n)
  7. 165 (177n)
  8. 162 (163n)
  9. 159 (160n)
  10. 166 (168n)
  11. 156 (161n)

Hopefully that breaks out how inconsistent RPs are, and how much pack dynamics affects … everything.

For clarity, this was also doing as good of a job as I could sitting with the bot while testing something else, as seen in my bug report this morning:
Robo Partners don't experience braking in U turns

This was as maximum consistency as possible with this robo partner as one can get in a public world for these data points.

10

But real life isn’t realistic to Zwift remember! Zwift does its own thing.

The sticky draft you get when trying to overtake others blows out any of the controlled results people do with their solo 300 watt 75kg bots.

Any of those bots are not too realistic because they don’t pedal like real people, we change gears, we have power dips and surges. We might be able to do the same average power over 60 minutes as a the bot, but the way we did that is different - our power is not a dead flat level line.

And that’s probably where the sticky draft catches us out.

11

I assume by now that the RPs are riding upgraded Trons, and many of the blob riding with them have also upgraded their bikes.

12

If they only ride Tron bikes they will never upgrade them

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13

Unless those robopacers are upgraded already by manual intervention (ie, by script).

We know some of them had halo bikes for a while.

Not so sure about that, it takes I think 8000km to fully upgrade a halo bike. Folks riding normally under their own power won’t do that so quickly.

I have R4000 at level 1 upgrade, and Project 74 about 500km from level 2. But that’s with only about 300-350 per week riding. Some obviously do more, but even at 1000km it’s still taking 8 weeks.