Can someone at Zwift please acknowledge the resistance flywheel feedback issue on KICKR trainers pertaining to primarily ERG Mode when a gradient is encountered and maintaining the cadence at the same power becomes easier going uphill and harder going downhill? This has been around for quite a while and I was glad to see others commenting about it finally. The flywheel feels like it “fights” when efforts are easier and gradient is causing this even though we don’t expect that to have any effect in a workout - but it does.
There are several posts in the 1.68 thread but this has been around since at least 2Q 2022 to my experience.
It still exists in 1.69.
The foundation of this issue seems to be related to “base resistance”. You can shift up into “harder” gears and reduce the effect of it somewhat, but it shouldn’t be that way.
If the effort becomes harder in wattage target, it becomes less noticeable. If the effort is easier like gray or blue zone (for me, this may differ for others), it is much more pronounced. You can easily reproduce it if you set a constant ERG target perhaps around 100-150W, especially in an easier gear, on rolling terrain.
It is also the case of this type of effect when the gradient feel trainer difficulty is scaled to 0 with the trainer difficulty slider in SIM mode.
You can see the variances of cadence following the small bumps in the Big Flat 8 route with this workout tonight. And when the harder efforts hit, the cadence is naturally easier to maintain at a higher level, which can be seen in the yellow and orange efforts.
Investigation of this would surely be appreciated.
It doesn’t matter if it is a group or solo workout.
Here is the activity for this screenshot - Activity 1655468191847039024
