@James_Zwift Is there an update on this? I remember you mentioning something about this…
James,
These new pace partners are Great!
I’ve now ridden with D Draft (2.15 w/kg) which works out to a nice Sweet Spot pace for me and then D Duke (1.8w/kg) who is a high Zone 2 pace. Enjoyed both for their respective workouts. Love it. I fully support the standard weight and height of the bots, so the only change is power.
These bots add to the social nature of riding on Zwift, providing a group ride environment for us solo riders – well done!
I would encourage you (Zwift) to focus on the bot’s chatter, to encourage more social interaction during the ride. I enjoy riding with folks from around the world, in different time zones, different hemispheres, and different weather, all interesting banter during a ride… the whole good morning from Vancouver - good evening from London is always fun.
Thanks again, and keep up the great work!! This is A+++ !
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The Apple TV interface with pace partners remains super buggy. In addition to a low success rate of finding the pace partner on launching a ride, I’ve had a couple of joins where my avatar fails to follow the pace partner course and I have to manually navigate to stay with the group. Fully closing the app and restarting the Apple TV seems to help…oh that also refreshes the guest worlds which the Apple TV app seems to fail to sync with the actual schedule.
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I’ve covered this to an extent here: Weekly Pace Partner Update - W/C 30th May
Also wanted to opine about the variable paces…After riding with 2.1, 2.5, 3.0, 3.2, and 4.0 bots over the past few days, I don’t think it works as well for the faster paces. It seems to me that the faster the pace is, the larger the delta between the in-draft level of effort required on the flats and the higher effort required on the climbs.
The 2.5-3.0 bot range is maybe where I would suggest the cutoff for turning off the variable pace. At 3.0 and below, I think it makes more sense because the delta is smaller and people will normally want to push a little higher on the climbs, but above 3.0 you are already pushing a lot higher pace on the climbs even without the variable pacing.
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Thanks James…sorry I hadn’t seen the newer post on this topic.
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I’ve been thinking the same thing. With the old static pacing, flying away from Diesel and Coco on anything resembling a hill (even the towering Col du Tempus) was a problem, so the 10% increase is welcome at those paces. Brevet almost seemed like he had dynamic pacing built in from the start… I could draft him on the flats at 209w, but I averaged around 240w following him up Zwift KOM. That seems like enough of a bump without him increasing his pace by 10%. Decreased pace on the descents is still nice though.
Let me disqualify all of that by saying I haven’t ridden with Brevet on any significant climbs since he got switched to dynamic pacing (just Volcano CCW last week). Don’t know about Anquetil either - I only attempt to ride with her if I catch her on a long descent 
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Exactly, thanks. I actually went and looked at three rides each with Cadence and Brevet on the Desert road between the two turnarounds:
- Cadence average 185W, 2.3W/kg
- Brevet average 222W, 2.8W/kg
I rode that section with Anquetil this morning at 230W average (2.9W/kg)…
So I think it’s clear that as the delta between 2.9 and 4.2 (or 4.6 OUCH) is quite a bit higher than 2.3W/kg to 2.5 (or 2.7).
Even without dynamic pacing, the increase in W/kg from in-draft to matching the pace partner’s actual effort (i.e., on a steeper climb) would be something like:
- Cadence 9% higher
- Brevet 18% higher
- Anquetil 45% higher
I would also add that the faster bots take on longer climbs. An extra 10% for a climb thats is only a few minutes with slower bots is easy to push out, but an extra 10% for 20 minutes is a significant difference.
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Correction corner:
Unfortunately this solution does not work. The assumption was that if you make a u-turn, you will then travel the route in the opposite direction. But, typically ZWIFT, that is not the case.
Did neon flats yesterday in a meetup, did a u-turn and whilst pedaling waited to see Denise Drops. After few km I was back on the right direction of the route and never „met“ Denise. 
Going to ride with Brevet today. Will let you know how I get on.
Favourite route in game 
I know this isn’t the most important point but I think the pace partners are named wrong.
They aren’t pace partners but power partners.
Just call them by their names and then it’s a non issue.
That would make the title of this thread very very long!
I might go with “Changes to James’ Kids [June 2022]” for the next one.
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I did a bit of climbing with Brevet yesterday and it isn’t that much different than before. 245w average on Titans KOM, 253w on Zwift KOM. I bravely turned my tail and fled just before Volcano KOM .
I started halfway up VolKom!
had this graphical glitch earlier where the riders disappear but the names were still showing, wasn’t a connection issue as zwiftalizer is showing no udp/tcp dropouts, the riders came back after a few seconds
on a pc running a 1050ti gpu
Yup, known issue
thought it might be! also this image was taken on the pace partner ride but it uploaded with the race i did rather than the pace partner ride