Event Cooldown feature

A new feature for events is being tested: Event Cooldown. Organizers may request a cooldown period where participants can remain together in the event venue for a configurable amount of time after the finish for post-event chat.

Rhino Racing has enabled this for our weekly Rhino Crash chase race this Sunday at 18:30 UTC / 19:30 BST / 14:30 US Eastern time. We’re interested in hearing your feedback about the experience and whether we should keep it enabled. If you join the Crash this weekend, please report back either here or in the Rhino Racing Discord.

Sign up link: https://www.zwift.com/events/view/5024320

Live race radio available: https://discord.gg/wPD4HJ6

We used it on Wednesday.

All looks good from here; wasn’t sure how it would play out or if it would cause issues, however… all went on without a hitch, sans one weird thing:

The only bug I saw was the distance to finish on the event was wrong; it extended ~2 miles beyond our finish line in Paris; not sure what that was about, or where it actually would’ve ended up, however the finish line was the correct lap marker.

From the finish line, we set a 10 minute cooldown. Once you cross that finish line, your 10 minute starts (if someone else crosses the line 10 minutes later behind you, your 10 is up, and theirs is just beginning FYI; for lap/distance based events.) That may seem obvious, but it’s hard to say if the 10 minutes is 10 for each user, or 10 from the first person finishing on a distance/lap based event.

Once you cross the line, you’re given the option to leave the event, and review the results.
image

Final results sometimes take 10-15 seconds to display, but no issues were seen on my end.

The ‘neat’ feature about event cooldown, is yellow beacon can still see your comments, and you can see them across the center of the display as if you are still in the ride (because… you technically are.) As opposed to being spit out to the public world and waiting for others to cross the line to say your goodbyes, or what have you.

All in all, a nice little feature for rides where the riders like to stick around for a little while longer, but still also “complete” the event for unlockables etc.


A final note, is event cooldown did not seem to break ZPower, nor dual recording feature within ZP either, so all good there from my test.

So only bug is that finish line distance seems to get jumbled, which I sadly do not have an image of.

2 Likes

@James_Zwift any way we can ensure that odd distance thing doesn’t happen in the Rhino Crash tomorrow?

Delayed but follow-up on this. I’ll be using it on one of my weekly rides as well; so two of ours are now utilizing the feature, and thus can keep an eye on whatever issue I saw last week.

With that said, on our ride this week, I did not experience the same issue where the distance to finish read incorrectly.


Previous week was Champs-Élysées; where near the line it still showed ~2-2.5ish miles to go on the route to finish.

This week we were on Island Hopper; and despite that route… having an invisible finish line (literally a white stripe on the ground as you go around a bend lol), I did not see this issue.

I’d like to see races like the Zmonthly have the race finish line before the route lap completion with various finishing gradient profiles, using cooldown to send those interested towards or past the route lap banner.

this is a cool feature! Looking forward to trying it out next fall

Sounds good, can start the discussion & accusation of sticky watts post race with no delay - I’m sure users will appreciate the opportunity being provided.

2 Likes

In the race we did, there was no problem with the reported distance to finish. The only oddity I saw was that time gaps were still reported in race to riders who had already finished.

How does it work after you cross the line, are riders teleported to the winner, is there a rubberband keeping everyone together? Or is everyone just left by themselves after the race (if you got dropped)?

It’s just like finishing an event normally except you’re still in the event context where the group chat is only the people in the event, and you don’t get prompted to leave for another world if applicable. Plus you get a finishing position shown on each avatar, and you can bring up the race results page again if you want.

1 Like

Yeah it’s actually kind of nice. Not sure where the idea came from, but I like its function.

I have it set for my Monday ride now since a vast majority of us extend a 60 minute ride to almost 90. It’s beneficial because it doesn’t spit us out into public space, and if we’re chatty as much as we are… we aren’t going to be obnoxious in the public world.

It also means that folks that are indeed done at the 1 hour mark are still technically completing the ride; which is genuinely what makes this a good feature; this is particularly good for rides with unlocks.

1 Like

Sounds like this makes a lot of sense and really should be the default for all events once all the bugs have been ironed out. Never really understood the point of the change worlds prompt in the first place, and staying with your group is a lot more like the IRL post-race experience.

1 Like

Well, the issue still exists, so I guess it’s indeed route or maybe even world-specific.

Here’s an example as I rolled up into the finish line on Rolling Highlands, showing 3.2 miles to finish.



This is still the only bug I’ve run into on the feature.
The main request however from myself and several other users is the ability to teleport to yellow beacon.

2 Likes

How would that work if the yellow beacon has not crossed the finish line yet?
Or if the yellow beacon has finished, and you have not? Wouldn’t that affect race results.
Say you were still 500 meters from the finish and you teleport to the yellow beacon who has finished the race.

It would have to, like coffee, only be functionally available when all criteria are met; which isn’t a big deal and should be the easiest part about how it would work.

The fact that teleporting only works in free-roam and not in group rides however would be what takes the most work.

Regardless, it would really be a cherry for Cool-Down

Can we get a five or ten minute coffee break in the cooldown?

1 Like

I really like the teleport idea to let people regroup after the finish line.
In a race where there is no beacon the race winner could be assigned as the beacon for this purpose.

1 Like

This inconsistency needs to get worked out or the numbers should not be shown on riders, or wait until they’re aligned before showing them. During the cooldown we had two riders rolling around with “1st” printed on them.


Huh. That’s new, hadn’t seen finishing place markers on riders like that before.

Do you know if that was a feature the first time you had enabled it?
I’m not actually sure how our rides that have it enabled are set up, I’m guessing it isn’t marked as a race but does have the finishing placement screen enabled; but I guess those two don’t have to be related.

@Andrew_Nuse Last week when I did the Allez race I did not see the markers on riders, but when I did this week’s race in that same series, I did see them.