The Zwift client crashed immediately upon startup for me today multiple times. I’d double-click the icon, get a Windows message box telling me that Zwift wanted permission to make changes to my system, and upon clicking “Ok” I immediately got a crash notification for Zwift. I tried it three or four times, all with the same result. Remembering that I’d actually installed TrainerRoad on this machine yesterday, I went back and removed TR, rebooted the machine, and tried again with the exact same results. I finally re-ran the Zwift installer and that solved the problem. Once the installer finished, I ran the launcher again, got notified that it was updating, and a few minutes later everything came up and I was ready to roll.
About 28 minutes into the ride, I’d just won the orange spint Jersey, and a handful of seconds later Zwift crashed again. I don’t think I was doing anything at that point but riding. There may have been an AI or two around me but I don’t remember. I kept riding, restarted Zwift, logged back in, linked sensors, and kept right on going.
Everything went well again until right around the 32 minute mark after the crash and restart. I was descending the backside of Deliverance Hill and going back and forth with another online rider in a bit of a draft battle when Zwift crashed again. I was done with my workout at that point and mostly just cooling down and playing so I called it a day and shut down.
On the plus side, I really like the new rider status bars, both the colors and the w/kg displays. Very helpful. I saw another suggestion about adding HR to the status, and I like the idea but I’m also a little ambivalent. I feel like the HR might be ok but adding an indication of what HR zone the rider’s in might be a little bit too much info. Better, I think, to maybe see he’s at 160 bpm without really knowing what that means for him. Is 160 bpm 95% of max or 75% of max for that rider? You probably don’t know, like you wouldn’t in real life, so you have to stategize accordingly. I think that adds a bit to the competition. Just my two cents.
I LOVE the sprint timers. They seemed to work well for me, I didn’t notice any problems at all. The only problem with them is that they are an almost irrisistable carrot. Very hard to stay at my endurance wattage like I’m supposed to with those timers beckoning me to hammer, just a little bit. Or, you know, a lot.
One suggestion I would make with regard the timers is to set them up to behave like the TT finish timers on race broadcasts. That is, show time to beat until you’ve missed it, then update the timer to show a time to beat for the next position (2nd, 3rd, etc), and keep updating until you cross the line.
Last but not least, the graphics definitely seemed even better today. I definitely had the impression gameplay was smoother. I was descending Deliverance Hill just as the sun was coming up above the hills and it looked fantastic.