Zwift Click controls don’t have brakes. Only Ride and Play (discontinued) have that feature.
Click is buttons, just like Play, no reason why they couldn’t be programmed to activate brakes on descents, for example when no pedalling is registered for say 2+ seconds.
1 Like
One reason might be someone wants to continue to coast rather than brake after 2 seconds of coasting.
Particularly now that drafting downhill works. Need to coast to avoid rolling through and off the front
1 Like
Not if they were about to be heavily auto-braked, if they tried to take a bend too fast, rather than dabbing the brakes themselves with their Zwift Click/Play.
1 Like
Steering on my right hand Play controller has died, so I’m presuming braking would be too. Does that mean I would only have half the braking using the left controller? 
Agreed. Cam Wurf when on cannondale in 2014 rode away from the peloton I was in while doing a pedaling super tuck. It was amazing to watch.
Braking on descents was already programmed because there was a video of a guy comparing the times with and without autobraking down alpe and you could see how line got red that indicated when you had or you were braked. I also remember that it was pretty good made because braking kicked before the corner and then brakes released before entering the corner like irl but it never got released
You can see here that they were working on it but never released Competition & AI Tech Update: November 2022 Recap - #5
BTW i really liked the Competition & AI Tech Update that they did every month telling us the users what they were working on and how development of the features was going.
2 Likes
Having tried IndieVelo as-was, the automating annoyed the t1ts off me. It doesn’t brake as I would IRL. It has no skill associated with it so you can’t make it unique. Without some sort of crashing/stopping penalty applied to poor manual braking, what’s the point? There may be some value if used on a proper critical circuit to replicate the stop/start nature of those events, but elsewhere it’s just not necessary. I had enough of IV applying brakes on an open bend or corner that IRL I could have got round without brakes, especially given a full road and no traffic to worry about.
Stop looking for realism when you’re rolling along a tarmac road through a jungle with dinosaurs for company, on a rim-driven LED bike.
7 Likes
Auto-Breaking is useless, the only way Breaking would be significant is if not breaking meant you would miss the corner and crash, like in car simulators, otherwise, what difference does it make?
1 Like
It will reduce the speed of all riders:
In a descent, instead of breakaway going at 70kph and peloton at 90kph, they will be both at 40kph after the turn.
In other words, if peloton do not push after each turn, and breakaway is pushing after each turn, the breakaway will be gaining time on the peloton (whereas with the current new drafting update they are losing a lot of time).
I believe this is more realistic compared to what we see IRL, where breakaways are gaining time against the peloton most of the time.
5 Likes
FYI, here is how autobraking in descent turns was implemented (and never used) in PD4 2 years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyUJajfc2PM
1 Like
There was another video that showed a red line so it showed when you were going be be braked in advanced and it got green when brakes were released. Maybe that line was for people with steering to know when to brake but i dont really know. This was the link to the video that someone shared on FB Watch Braking (1) | Streamable
I see your point.
Looking at your video (Nicely done BTW!) Maybe this feature was never rolled-out because they probably never figured out what do do in case of a mixed group of riders where some have Zwift Play Controllers (With Brake) and some don’t. Auto-break would be disabled on riders with Zwift-Play, letting them “brake” into corners. Some issues I see with that are:
1- What if they don’t brake? are they forced into auto-break? after how many seconds? would they loose the same speed as the other riders around them, if they started breaking late?
2- What if they just touch and release the brake to prevent the auto-break from engaging? would they just loose a few km/h whereas the rest of the group would loose 35km/h avg?
This probably was introduced in other platforms because they don’t have a mixed group to riders with and without external controllers, making it a simpler implementation.
FWIW I believe that Zwift is able to disable braking on Play controllers as it does this prior to workouts. They could just disable that feature and subject everyone to the same auto braking measures.
Sure they can (on an Event Basis), but then what’s the point of having a break button on the Zwift Play Controllers?
Having said that, Zwift Play has been discontinued, the new Zwift Click don’t have them, maybe they are going in this direction.
I tested this down the grade yesterday and a rider doing 5Wkg (300W) didn’t pass me when I was supertucking at 80kg.
I also tested uphill draft and there is no difference cause when you hit 10% you are going so slow that there is almost 0 draft anyway.
This changes will have very little effect in 99% of the races so people there is nothing to stress here.
5 Likes
If it doesn’t have an effect on packs on the way up and down, then what is the benefit of the change?
The effect is that now you can draft down Radio Tower 
Draft at -7% or +7% is the same as before
1 Like
This. X1000…
3 Likes