It seems like when you are on the hill the speed for 6 or 7% gradient reads fairly correct but it does not reflected the gear I am a pushing. In other words, I may be in a 50-19 gear and at a fairly high cadence which on the road would translate to a 15-18 mph speed but in Zwift it registers under 10 mph.
My other observation regarding the gradient graphics is that it looks like you are always going down hill regardless of a positive or negative slope; we tend to read graphs from left to right and the hill icon is high on the left and low on the right. Perhaps two icon should be mirrored for positive slopes.
Okay that is helpful. But when you use other apps the resistance actually gets hard enough where you have to shift to a climbing gear relatively close to world resistance. I am not trying to complain but it is an issue if the apps are trying to approximate real world/real road experience.
What equipment are you using? The current slope graphics are showing right to left because we are riding counter clockwise on the island. The "normal way " is clockwise and the slope does go left to right. This “inversion” is a recent experiment by the software team- we are riding backwards.
BTW, I have to say while the team has good intentions for reversing the graphics for counterclockwise it doesn’t translate to how most graphic minded people are trained. In other words, when you ride outside you do not have a tendency to reverse orientation when you reach the bottom of the hill…you know you start at the bottom/beginning and you will end up at the top. Unless of course this is all contradicted because you were trained in Arabic or Persian script.
Direction is chosen by the software not user. Yes, for whatever reason, the climbing is probably still too easy for a given gear. I can pretty much do the whole island in my big ring (slow cadence on the steeper uphill) which is not something I would be able to do in real life with the grades on the island.
You are correct. But let’s also keep in mind that the only reason to exchange observations and comments is to provide input to the development team. I am sure I can be contradicted for any given comment but it does not negate the fact that one of the users was disoriented right or wrong.
When i compare say 9% on VirtuaTrainer vs 9% on ZWIFT there is a big difference. On VirtuaTrainer it would cause me to come off the big ring while on ZWIFT i can keep it on the big ring all around the island no issue (This is with having the kickr in sim mode through the iphone app). So i would agree there still needs to be tuning to how the kickr translates.
I believe this was addressed before & the awnser is the hills are easy on purpose, possibly to keep it more enjoyable or maybe so you don’t need to shift the front rings. It would make it harder to keep up when cresting a hill on a smart trainer with all the upshifting needed to start pushing more watts again.
If that is the case then they need to add a “sim” mode where the hills represent as close to the feel of the grade as possible. This would be key for training purposes.
I don’t think they are too far off for short hills. I will go up hills in the big ring that are about this length but I agree they are maybe not quite 10% feeling. I wouldn’t really want to be shifting to the inner ring on an indoor trainer where it can get bogged down and overheat on longer climbs.