How to read the elevation profile while riding?

Yeah somehow Zwift decided to not show the route you’re actually doing, but to show the route that’s most popular. Very silly.

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I think there are two basic improvements that would help:

  1. Make the direction arrow on the route profile more obvious. I did not realise until reading this thread that there was an arrow and had wondered why direction was seemingly random
  2. Show the profile of the actual route you are riding. I am not sure why it would show anything else to be honest.
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Agreed. Though the direction arrow does not even need a direction. Always point right and have the next kms shown on the elevation map.

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I am in this boat too. Zwifting for 2 years now and just learned about the arrow in this thread. Never could tell by looking at the profile if I was going left to right or vice versa.

Either always left to right or a much bigger arrow please.

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at the bottom of the profile…what does the the big green dot and Zwift dot represent?

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Re direction of travel; I assumed it was always going right until i read this. I didn’t know about the arrow either. Really hard to see on an iPad. I guess it kinda makes sense, though, say for instance you did a U-turn and are now going the other way.

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I might have this wrong @Jason_Hand but the green is the sprint banner (the green fluro line across the road) and the Z is the finish of the race/ride you are on. I have 55inch tv but pc only supports 1080p so I dont see granularity for small changes in rides like Sand & Sequoias, but do get the general gist of whats coming next that will hurt or provide some relief :wink:

Green is a sprint banner, and Zwift dot is the Finish banner and the red polka dot is the KOM banner

image

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Imagine a car GPS that switches from direction-up to direction-down once in a while depending on which road you’re in and what the most popular direction for driving that road is, and you get the “logic” of this UI element.

The simple concept of “sometimes it’s left to right, sometimes right to left” is baffling. At least they didn’t extend this “concept” to the graphs at the bottom of the screen.

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I too find this odd - the map view does cycle round different views but a perspective of the course with the terrain indicated would be super helpful. I had exactly the same feeling on exactly the same course - a climb that goes on forever that you don’t know if it ever has a down! It is a bizarre omission in my view.

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Thanks all, this info was super-useful! Been using Zwift for a few weeks and the elevation profile/route piece is an absolute nightmare. Worst piece of UI design I’ve seen in a long time! At least I now understand what it’s (trying) to tell me - thanks.

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Hi folks, another question on the course profile. When you use the companion app to display course profile it overlays it along the bottom of the screen. There is no indication of where you are on the course profile like the mini-map. Is it the case that the right hand side of the profile is where you are (ie. it doesn’t show what the road ahead looks like, just the road you’ve covered)? Thanks in advance

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You may be pressing the “graph” button which isn’t elevation profile but instead your past power and past heart rate (line graph)

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Thanks Ben. That may be the case…its the button on the companion app I press which looks like a profile. can’t find any reference to it on Zwift vids etc

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I too think that not having advance warning of what’s up ahead, is a major bummer. The way it’s done in alpe du zwift is what we need in all routes. IRL you can look ahead and see. On a screen it’s much harder. Not too few times, I’ve been caught in a heavy gear when suddenly the route goes 15, 16… 20% up! You come to a virtual standstill, it takes forever to switch gears and it’s pretty hard on the drive train under such a heavy load. Very frustrating. If crowding the main screen with data is a problem, just give us an option on the companion app to see the detailed profile instead of the map.

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I came over from Rouvy and while they have their own set of issues, the race / route profile is CLEAR as day light and you can see when a hill approaches, how tough it will be and the length. Zwifts tiny profile on the top right is essentially useless. When it’s on the TV or even laptop I cannot see where I am, the profile, upcoming hills… so it makes a race extremely tough to read. I’ve been doing ‘oh my crit’ and oh my word, its terrible. The route is undulating and you got no idea how to race it… waiting for muscle memory to be a thing!

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I wonder if there’s a gravedigger badge for resurrecting old threads.

I use an android tablet and the green and dotted icons along with rider position are hard to see. I didn’t know there was an arrow in rider position until today.

I don’t usually use the power graph at the bottom, an option to have the course elevation and segments marked there would probably work. And by segments I mean beginning and end.

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Don’t feel bad about that, it took me a year to find this out, and on a 55” screen I still can’t make out which direction it’s pointing.

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Exactly! I have a laptop to my left and 55” monitor in front of me and I can’t tell which direction I’m going or what is coming up. Just reading this ancient thread in 2022 makes my blood pressure double. As was stated, in real life you can see what’s coming up. It is INCREDIBLY irritating to not be able to tell on Zwift. I may try Rouvy.

I am all new to Zwift after buying a Neo 2T five days ago… I am currently testing different apps and a lot of Zwift looks great (as expected from the number one app). But understanding the upcoming height profile is way off compared to the competition, so I searched for how to change it, as it’s almost unreadable in the default mode. After finding it, I realized after some kilometers that I was moving right to left in it. There is a very clear UI norm for graphs like that in the rest of the world. Left to right. And it is way too small… Etc. I have worked a lot with UI design professionally over the years.

So Google led me to this old thread started in 2019 and I almost stopped reading as it should be way too old, until I saw a screenshot that looks like what I have today. From 2019. Amazing that no priority has put on this rather easy thing to fix - as it is very important for us users? We buy expensive smart trainers where the main focus is to simulate pedaling resistance and slopes as good as possible. And that is then displayed in a very small awkward profile in the top right corner at the bottom of the small map that gets 90 % more space. And it’s so small and unclear that you can hardly read it? And in a “game” like this the current slope and upcoming slopes is way harder to see and feel than IRL. The current slope should be very clear and in focus - and the best possible way of seeing what happens in the upcoming few hundred meters… When to put in the last push near the end of a steep slope is how races are won IRL… Not too early, not too late.

There are naturally many ways of doing it better. Look at every competitor out there for inspiration :wink: And even though they are better it still has too little focus in most of them in my opinion. How about letting us size it, place it in the middle if we want, color code it and maybe show a focus area for the next few hundred meters with an overview of the whole track in another bar? I think that there are many ways to improve it :slight_smile: