Huh, I’m not confused. 
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Hi Dominik, does that draft bug concern everybody?
I felt it also yesterday during a c group ride, I had 3.1 w/kg average.
Its strange, it felt like sometimes its even better to be in the first position, instead in the pack.
I am on a ATV4, kickr snap.
Yes kurt, the same here,but not everybody has it.
Best place is in the back.
Hi Kurt, good question…but i think the answer is yes.
you can easy spot those who are concerned the most by comparing the riding distance on your right mini screen…you will see some with +/- 0,3…0,6…or even more delta ,x miles than you have because of the bug…now the lesser you have…the lesser you were imposed to that bug…in comparison with others…my sensation is also that when the bunch stretches out more, is more in line than side by side the ride becomes easier again. and fact…its easiest at the back…though you have to be careful not to lose the wheel in front…
Dominik have zwift said why it may only impact certain riders? I noticed drafting issues since zrl race on 27th Oct. had thought it may have been a bug when canyon aeroad was downgraded. Just wondering if there is anything I can change instead of just waiting for a bug fix. Any other options that may be causing it, anything to reinstall or is it hardware, I run tacx neo2 on a low powered laptop but wired to fast broadband network. Hope it’s not related to increasing numbers on the platform.
@Gerrie_Delport_ODZ, what impact does FPS have apart from my visual enjoyment? My FPS appears to be 2-10 with averages between 4 and 6. I often have problems with the screen not displaying other riders correctly at the start of busy events. I had changed screen resolution up to medium when I first wired my adsl in, was that a mistake should I put it back to low resolution? Didn’t think any of this would impact the performance of my bike in the game.
That is SUPER low FPS.
You may be out of the draft and won’t know it. Also your position is sent back to Zwift to determine if you are in the draft or not.
Hi Alex…no, they did not comment if only certain riders are impacted…but i think everybody has to deal with. no distinction between riders or bikes you use…and i can confirm, that i also noticed this around the same date…first impression that i had, was hectic lateral movement of riders around me within big bunches…
i can only repeat what zwift wrote me…(quote): “we know about, we work on it, but we don’t have a bug-fix release date so far.”
so…it’s nothing to do with your hardware setup.
and concerning your FPS…well, i think its def. on the lower range of enjoyable ride experience.
on huge rides i am also around 8-10 fps on a macbook pro 2015…its ok but not top.
but you can play with resolutions and try of course…
but actually i cannot see a reason why this would impact the crosstalk with zwift-servers…
maybe Gerrie has more insight here…
anyways, we have to be patient and ride at the back of the bunch (=easiest)…lol
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This is hard to explain. But your pc send your position to the server then receive the other riders position then calculate your draft based on that but if Zwift only get data 5 times in a second then the calculation will be incorrect most of the time.
That is why you see all the lateral movement because the position of all those riders only gets update a few times a second.
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I have just changed to a pc build optimized for zwift and much better spec than my old laptop and the problem seems to have gone. May have gotten lucky as it was only one race. Time will tell. I’ve went from similar fps to you, to 60fps. I tried various bikes and had the problem with them all, so not linked to the aeroad.
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thx Gerrie !!
Alright. I have a hypothesis as to why group rides/races feel harder for some people and IT COULD be related to the distance bug.
I’ve done quite a few 3R 3w/kg 100 km rides and in the recent ones I noticed I have to push a bit more w/kg than I was used to to stay in the group. For reference last winter I did these rides around 3.15-3.2 w/kg at 65 kg. This year however I have to average 3.3-3.5 at 66kg depending on the route.
I also noticed I’m usually the one with the fastest accumulating distance in the list on the right. For example on today’s 100 km ride I finished with 105.8 km accumulated. Others around me had mostly around 102 km at the end. That’s nearly 4 km less distance covered.
So here’s my hypothesis: While riding in the group, for the same time spent, I accumulated more distance… Thus Zwift is maybe thinking me or the group as a whole is actually going faster than it really is and it’s making me push more w/kg to stay with the group.
The ride lasted ~2:20. Difference in distance covered was around 3.6 km compared to other riders. That’s a speed difference of roughly 1.5 km/h. How many watts is that at that speed? I dunno.
Could this be the issue?
Put you log.txt file in to zwiftalizer.com and look at you average and minimum frame rate FPS.
Let us know what you see
Obviously FPS in such a big group is always going to be a bit of an issue, but I haven’t had these issues (higher w/kg required) last spring. AVG FPS was 16, lowest drop was to 6. No weak ANT+ signal. Only 1-2 searches on all devices and all prior to the start of the ride. Network performance and Network connections all clear as well with tiny bumps at the very start - which is normal.
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That is very low. Try to reduce you resolution.
Yes Zwift made a lot of improvements in the past year adding lots of detail, also the groups got bigger.
FPS is almost completely irrelevant in this case. This is all dependent on PING which could range anywhere from 5 to a couple hundred milliseconds depending on where the individual riders and Zwift servers are located. Thus, all things considered, it’s extremely unlikely that Zwift would update your and other riders position within the group more than a couple times per second.
hi V…have you read the entire thread?
its all explained there…
YES, it seems the excessive lateral movement within the bunch adds more distance thus you need more delta watts (+0,5w) to stay there.
YES, zwift is aware of and will release a bug-fix anytime sooner or later.
And YES, workaround for me in this context is, to ride at the back … easier
So we only can wait and hope for early fix…
I made an observation based on the fact that people that see this behavior also have low FPS and that people reported it to be fixed after upgrading to have better FPS.
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Changing the RESOLUTION does VERY LITTLE in terms of FPS while decreasing the look of the game significantly.
Going from 1080p to 720p to 576p the FPS goes from avg 33 to 35 to 38 during normal ride for me.
When in a big group where (at starting pens for example) where FPS might drop to as low as 10 changing from 1080p to 576p does not even add a single FPS.
It seems that FPS is much more dependent on the GRAPHICS PROFILE (Basic, Medium, High, Ultra) - which is something you CANNOT CHANGE and Zwift decides which profile to use on its own. Trust me, I would use a BASIC profile at 1080p IF I COULD.
You can edit the ultra, high, … (which your GPU is currently using) file - you can find how somewhere @ zwiftinsider.com.
I did not test it, I think the most users try to get better graphics, but why not to go the other way, if it helps?
Ride on!
As you have discovered, changing the resolution setting does nothing if you are CPU bound, and this is the case for many laptops. It also affects literally everyone in group events, where an RTX 3090 wouldn’t get any more frames per second than a GTX 1050 with the same CPU. It’s just the way Zwift is coded.
Alas, changing profile wouldn’t affect it either.