Only recently got a smart trainer, and had lots of free trials with other apps included.
I forget which one it was but it give you the % of climb PLUS how far at each % EG 3.4% for 200m or 1% for 2K etc much more realisic than 1 to 10% in the blink of an eye
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I have the same question everyone else here does: Why is the in-game Elevation Profile still so terrible?! Iāve been waiting to see this improved for over a year and am still frustrated and annoyed by this almost every time I use Zwift.
I use a 50" TV and the comically tiny directional arrow is too small to see from 5ā away, and even when I can tell which direction Iām going, the profile displayed is often inaccurate or misleading ā showing elevation from a course Iām not even riding, or displaying elevation on a horizontal scale so distorted that I have no idea what to expect.
Every time I ride or race an unfamiliar course it is difficult or impossible to anticipate what the elevation is going to be like, and elevation is the single most important factor on a course in determining the difficulty of the ride / race. Every other app Iāve used has useful in-game elevation, and Iām even able to download useful elevation profiles to my Wahoo Element for rides in the real world. Zwift has the information, displays the profile before the event starts, and can even show me my real-time gradient ā yet the real-time display is consistently useless.
Why canāt Zwift improve this?! Itās bad enough that I seriously consider giving up on Zwift entirely.
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I find that enjoying Zwift requires a large degree of managing my expectations. Iām working the black line and itās going OK.
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I donāt understand why going up the bonus climb looks like it is barely a bump in the road!
The scale is completely off, and Zwift doesnāt seem capable of showing a shorter horizontal axis to better represent the gradient.
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Completely agree. Iām a new user and the elevation profile (or lack of it) is very frustrating. I was on RGT for a few years and eventually switched to Zwift mainly because everyone else seemed to be there. While RGT lacks a lot of the user base and route options of Zwift, they actually have a usable elevation profile displayed on the bottom with color coding indicating the incline (dark red hard, green easy, etc.) which is very easy to read and unambiguous. On Zwift Iām never sure how long a hill is going to last for and always seem to be getting āsurprisedā by climbs that show up āout of nowhereā.
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My .02
- The route profile display should show the rider icon at a fixed position (perhaps at the half-way point left-to-right in the profile screen [?]), while the profile itself scrolls along past, rather than having the rider icon move across a fixed profile image.
- The profile should never suddenly switch, as it currently does whenever you enter a new segment of the world.
- In events, Zwift already knows the entire course, so it should be able to seamlessly feed you the correct profile from start to finish (i.e. the profile could seamlessly scroll past with no sudden changes).
- In free rides, Zwift should seamlessly feed you the profile with no changes, unless you manually switch routes at an intersection, at which time it would switch profiles if necessary.
- You should be able to zoom in or out of the profile, somewhat like you can do for the current inset map.
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In the upcoming release RoadCaptain will include an elevation profile:
A preview build can be downloaded here Release 0.6.11.0 Ā· sandermvanvliet/RoadCaptain Ā· GitHub
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I glanced through most of these replies, and didnāt see one that mentioned that in France, the elevation graph is spectacularly useless, since most of the time it shows VenTop, making every other elevation change completely flat.
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Adding my voice to the choir. This is one of the most glaring omissions in Zwift. I only imagine if suddenly any major cycling computer manufacturer just said āno more elevation profiles for anyoneā.
This is just such a massive and integral part of cycling for me that I canāt understand how this is not being prioritised by the company.
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In some ways itās worse than not having an elevation profile, since it shows you the profile of some route you may not even go. In races you just have to know where the hills are or you may get a nasty surprise after a turn. That happened to me today: I looked at the profile and thought āooh nice hill, go hard thereā and a few seconds later the hill was gone.
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the worst part is that it used to be good but they ruined it!
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For comparison, RGT has whole two elevation profiles: one with colour-coded gradients at the bottom of the screen covering the whole route, and a slightly smaller one in the top right corner showing a more detailed profile of just ~200 m before and after your current position.
I find that both two are definitely useful, the big one for general orientation especially on an unfamiliar (magic road) route (plus it shows where the others are on the route), the small one for helping to navigate the terrain most efficiently, complementing the actual scenery ahead of you. It is certainly sometimes/often difficult to tell what the gradient is and how it changes just from the view of the road ahead on Zwift as well.
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We need a better elevation profile now! It is now difficult to do it, bkool has it , GRT has it. Just show a % of inclination and meters from beginning to end, for each change of %.
Wake up!
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Agree get it sorted
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I have a large screen and I still agree 
I donāt think itās necessary to have anything more than current gradient and a little bit of the next kilometre of your route.
What I would prefer on screen is a better map view showing the route ahead. I have it in companion app if I zoom right out but some way to have it on screen would be nice too.
The current view is fairly useless.