Bring back the exact watt goals for workouts. Stop the rounding!

Oh, crap. I thought the difference was Wahoo were the ones that defaulted it to on, didn’t realize other trainers didn’t have it.

Because of power smoothing it’s very easy to see the gaps in average power when you’re doing small wattage changes which probably makes this 5W increment much more obvious.

Maybe I’ll try doing that same 97W->107W workout with power smoothing off to see how messy it looks for me… Maybe I won’t be able to tell the difference without power smoothing on from the data. My pedaling technique is not that great so I bet it will be really messy and won’t be possible to see a 5W jump.

1 Like

ERG Power Smoothing is an option in the Wahoo app

Off topic, but imho important to know:

… enabling the feature means your trainer isn’t reporting instantaneous power accurately to Zwift

You can set “display 3s average” in Zwift, but as it says it’s “display” only.

Right, but the average should be correct, and for the purpose of this that is actually I think what we want to see.

I have power smoothing enabled, this setting does not effect power goals being sent from zwift to the trainer. It’s clearly a zwift issue. @SeattleSauve made the right tests as shown above.

I wonder why zwift changed this behavoir, it was functional in the first place and they just broke it. No need to embellish things here. :sweat_smile:

yeah i know, that is why I don’t have it - i don’t have a Wahoo trainer.

To be honest I don’t think i’d ever notice if the target being sent was 203 or 205 watts so not sure I mind either way on this one. I’m more just curious.

As I said the tacx app increases the target by +/- 5 watts and the elite one is +/- 10 watts when you just do a power based workout (not a pre built one) and i’m fine with that.

1 Like

If I want to train at 203 watts, I don’t want to get set to 205W. If I want to train at 202W, I don’t want to get set to 200W. It’s that simple.

It doesn’t really matter if you personally can’t feel or spot the difference @Chris_Holton. It was functional and now it’s been broken for quite a long time. No need for you to speak in Zwifts Favour. :thinking: :wink: :beers:

1 Like

Sorry - i didn’t mean they shouldn’t change it just that i’m not sure if i’m the best person to test it as i’d have absolutely no idea if it was going up at 1 or 2 watts a time or not.

And if you read any of my other posts (there are far far too many of them!) i am not someone who is shy about being critical of things zwift do badly or wrong.

1 Like

What is interesting, it seems that ZCA is calculating the correct power numbers in workout view.

Warmup:

91% FTP = 250W*0,91 = 227,5W
The target should have been 228W or rounded correctly 230W. But Zwift said 225W. :man_facepalming:

Its correctly displayed in workout view, but only for the actual step. All other steps are rounded. The actual power transmitted to the trainer is a rounded value as well.

@Chris_Holton It was supposed to be a funny post, therefore the smileys and beers. Didn’t mean to offend you, sorry if it was mistakeable.

I wasn’t sure so thought i’d air on the side of caution - no offense taken :slight_smile:

Just another voice upvoting, the rounding drives me nuts. Please just report the actual power. This is so obvious, it shouldn’t even be a question.

The analyses and graphics shown in the posting of Oct 14 clearly show, that Zwift IS rounding the power request sent to the trainer in 5W steps. Completely unmotivated/idotic, since inhibiting precise training control of athletes with lower power output.

The bug has been submitted serval times to Zwift support team. However, they seem to like the programming of yet another world more than eliminating bugs - even such trivial ones. It’s a pity.

1 Like

Well, it’s a challange of the present age that - using our multiple media - everbody may express the own “feelings”. You don’t bother the 10W stepping of elite’s control? Okay, for you! (no offence, I have noticed your comment on that :wink: ).

However, Niki_T_NikiT complained on Feb 2 (!), that she is not able to run her training adequately due to the CHANGE in Zwift program!

Nearly a year later, due to Zwift support passivity, this forum still debates the bug, yes, without taking the time for checking the facts and power number based analyses that have already been done… Zwift is wasting the time of their customers, hours, for a 5min taking change in the code…

So, I stop dissipating more time here… Hopefully, Zwift guys interrupt their work on 3D rendering another building for a minute for eliminating the “round” statement in the code… Have a great day! :wink:

I have already explained I agree with you.

For the record I think 10 watts is too much and I never use the elite app for training. But with 5 watt rounding it is only ever going to be at most 2 watts different to the target you set. For me this is more than adequate. This doesn’t mean I don’t think it should change if other people want it to just that I won’t notice the change.

1 Like

And please send actual power to the trainer as well … These 5w steps are noticable!

1 Like

For a specific training power value, yes, this may not be a great difference. But for sure it’s an issue if you want to do ramp up / down steps where you rely on a slowly, barely noticable increase or decrease in power output.

The most interesting part what Zwift fails to deliver is an explanation why this change has been done and why or when do they ever think of fixing this. It has worked flawlessly before, why was it changed? :man_shrugging:

2 Likes

bump This really is an issue. Scaring paying customers away shouldn’t be a company’s philosophy.

I think the exaplanatin as to why this is a problem for lighter riders has been well covered.

I’d like to add another reason why this rounding is extremely unhelpful, based on my experience today. I’m following a training plan currently, which has built-in workout progressions, based on the concept of progressive overload over time (i.e. gradually increasing either intensity or volume, or both).

The workouts progress by having the same basic structure to them from one week to the next, but either push “out” by expanding the time in zone for each rep, or push “up” by increasing the intensity for each rep, based on a percentage of FTP.

And here’s the problem - to make the intensity progressions manageable, they literally only increase intensity by 1-2% each time. That’s sufficient to increase the TSS and over the course of an 8-12week block amounts to a substantial increase.

The problem is… Zwift messes it up completely. Because if week one is at 84% of FTP, and week two is at 85% of FTP, week three at 86%, you “should” be targeting say 239w, 243w and 247w in that order - instead, because of the rounding you get 240,240,250 !! i.e. no progressoin at all in weeks 1-2, and then a massive jump in week 3. Hopeless.

Just extremely unhelpful and makes Zwift completely hopeless for delivering accurate workouts as part of a structured training plan.

Its the same basic issue as the recent font change - Zwift seem more interested in what looks nice stylistically, than what is actually practical and effective.

Please, please, please get rid of the rounding. It serves no purpose and is actively counterproductive for large swathes of customers, for multiple reasons!

3 Likes