Anyone notice a changed in pack dynamics. The power required to slowly push in front of the pack seems to have increased dramatically. I am not saying the tailgun effect, where you smash it from the rear and fly in front. But if you are mid pack packing with the group, the power require to push out in front to rider 1 is much higher than the packs average power. You can be doing 1w/kg over and still be trapped near the middle.
This also means there are a ton of wasted sticky draft watts.
Only in races?
I was with a robopacer group yesterday doing junk kilometres in the name of recovery and nothing seemed different, still same effort needed to overtake.
Your 1w/kg higher is less than I have to do for overtaking slower riders. Maybe things are tweaked so more people get to enjoy the sticky draft.
If so, good work whoever implemented it. 
Believe that’s by design so someone on their own can break away and win a race?
yeah i did
Maybe now that ZRS will be graduated from Zwift Labs it is a good time to start testing PD5 or maybe they are already introducing it slowly .
Hey gang - I checked with the folks working on PD5 and it has not been turned on outside of those test events.
Might be something else - a specific section of a particular route? Who knows? But it’s not PD5.
Do you have a time with PD5 out?
thanks for checking. i’m not sure the dynamics themselves are different, but something has changed drastically with how steering users and non steering users interact with eachother in zwift recently, and the sentiment now seems to be they are almost mandatory in specific formats.
myself, i was having serious problems riding with my TTT team over the last two weeks as the only non steering user, despite them doing their very best to look after me… to where we all decided collectively to become a “steering on” only team from now on
so i finally bought the controllers after publicly declaring on day 1 that i would never buy them. but i’m enjoying them so in the end the only harm done is to my pride… no problems hanging with my team anymore (go figure). but i was chatting with someone i know who is part of a team who usually wins in our category most weeks and they went in the opposite direction - everyone has steering off.
in races where there is a large group, it doesn’t seem to matter much but as of at least two weeks ago, mixing steering users with non steering users in TTTs has become almost impossible. i don’t do ladder racing myself but i would assume the case is the same in other small group settings such as ladder racing also
tldr: i still don’t think it’s necessarily the case that people with steering have some kind of advantage over those who don’t, but in situations like the above, the way steering users and non steering users interact seems to be causing issues to the point where teams are making it either mandatory for it to be on for everyone, or off
@shooj Are those test events open to everyone like us or only to few testers?
If yes where can we find those events.
I would be happy to use our Races for testing PD5.
W/kg do not matter on the flat.
It only depends on the raw wattage.
Would be nice to make PD5 active on the huge robopacer groups in Watopia (the ones with 100 plus people) to see how it really works,
A few comments in recent days I’ve observed about how fast coco group seems and I think so as well.
It was near 40km/h average speed when it should be something like 35 for more realism.
The way it worked the last time they changed it was they could enable it for an entire world, or for a specific event, but not selectively in what is essentially a free ride like joining a pace partner without doing it for everyone in that world.
Easy, throw caution to the wind, Watopia will love it. 
And will love the slower speeds of the huge groups.
I suppose the people who want their 100km in 2.5 hours won’t like it so much.
@Chris_D9 From what a guy that works for Zwift said few months ago PD5 isnt focused on slowing speeds but on how riders move in the pack so overtaking will be mostly from the outside instead of from the inside like now happens.
It might have a slowing effect if they have to overtake on the outside, if there is less draft there?
Zwift, any chance you can enable PD5 for Watopia - let it be tested in the biggest robopacer groups to see how it really works.
Some of those groups are now way too fast, it would be great to see if the new pace dynamics changes that.