How's New York? šŸ™

In General, the graphics are good but the futuristic aspect is a polar thing some will like it other not so much. The one thing that I found troubling is the sudden jump to 17% inclines, for some weaker trainers they can not replicate this so they max out way below 15%, however some more robust trainers can get to that level of resistance and that makes the climb nearly unbearable. I realize it is fun to replicate insane climbs but really in a manufactured world and particularly in a road ramp that would have been engineered it is totally unexpected and unwelcome. I would rather a real world experience if you feel you want to make 17-18% inclines, say some of the Belgium cols or Alpen climbs where they really do hit these insane inclines but for NY why? Otherwise not a bad world just not my favourite. Watopia is still the best because it has a bit of everything but in no case does it go over board.

9 Likes

Technically it is very clever however I was rather underwhelmed.

  1. No flatish routes
  2. The KOM is just too steep and most of the 10 routes seem to go over it
  3. The elevated roads were quite boring (beautiful, I agree)
  4. Just too crowded
  5. No real scenic highlights such as in London - could have gone down 5th Avenue, Broadway etc.
10 Likes

Iā€™m not liking NY. Sorry, but maybe youā€™ve got to be a New Yorker or have ridden Central Park regularly to like it. I see it as one 6 mile loop thatā€™s all the same, i.e. rolling terrain in the trees with lots of short steep climbs. Thereā€™s no variety. The sky road is kind of cool but sort of strange, too. (nice detail and graphics, though)

You could save this world by adding two or three loops that went out of the park and maybe followed the Hudson north and back as a flat road, and maybe another with a longer sustained climb. But, as it is right now? I think I prefer Watopia, London, Richmond, Innsbruck, and then NY, in that order.

11 Likes

NYC is one of those worlds that make you work even if you donā€™t want to. NYC is not the place to try to rack up easy kmā€™s. I like it a lot.

4 Likes

Not a fan of NYC. The grade transitions are too abrupt and if thereā€™s a route available without a 6+% grade in it I havenā€™t found it yet. I havenā€™t been a member for very long but this map has me rethinking whether or not I want to keep paying

10 Likes

Excellent graphics, though personally im not a fan of the course, doesnā€™t appear to be much of a flow to it. I enjoy the steep climbs. What will put me off Zwift is that it becomes an arcade game. a little artistic licence is ok for meā€¦ just dont fancy cycling around playing Pacmanā€¦

2 Likes

People that struggle with the gradient changes could also just enter workout mode and select a 2 hour free ride. This basically gives you flat roads for the entire ride (or at least you wonā€™t feel the percentages in your legs if you have a smart trainer).

This of course doesnā€™t work in group rides but personally I find that the park perimeter reverse loop isnā€™t all that bad in a group. You pretty much fly over much of the smaller climbs due to drafting and on the 2-3 climbs that are a little bit steeper you just make a small effort after which you can coast down again.
Even for ā€˜weakerā€™ (for lack of a better word) riders it should be more then doable to have a ā€˜smoothā€™ ride in any SUB2 group ride, which are plenty throughout the week.

I agree with Gerrie here: NYC is one of those courses that makes you work even if you donā€™t want to. Thatā€™s not necessarily a bad thing imoā€¦ itā€™s not like distance matters, especially on a turbo trainer, itā€™s the time you spent on the bike that counts.

Iā€™m not sure if itā€™s just me or a bug in the system. On the screen itā€™d look like a decent incline but the grade wouldnā€™t reflect it. There were times thatā€™d Iā€™d be on a hill that would be 5% in watopia but was showing 0% or even a negative percent.

1 Like

park perimeter is flat:

The Jungle was insanely gorgeous and gave wonderful terrain and a hill and loop.

Alp du Zwift gives us a wonderful mountain with a nice world on top of it.

Innsbruck gives us a nice hill and nice terrainā€¦

Richmond is a wonderful re-creation of the real world courseā€¦

London gives us all that and nice landmarks we can ride byā€¦

New York? Nope.

It is nice to have new places, butā€¦

  1. Graphics

For me on 1920x1080 PC the PC the leaves look pixelated and rough and the branches are often seen as flat textures on my ride around. The buildings blend into one mass of large grey blocks and do not give me a feeling of perspective or location in the world.

  1. Floating Road

The arbitrary changes of gradient on the floating road combined with the buildings being mostly just large grey blocks give me no sense of going up hill or downhill. It just feels like I am on a BKOOL GPS 3D map.

In the other worlds going uphill feels like going uphill and downhill feels like downhill because the terrain is there to give you the visual cues.

The floating road just feels like an ERG mode workout.

  1. Overall

Overall compared to the other worlds NY feels very ā€œun-VRā€ to me. On the other worlds I have a feeling of going up hill and down hill. I have a feeling of moving from place to place. NY does not give me that feeling. The floating roads are a big culprit. The rest of the course is fine, but it is tiny and feels the same mostly all the way around. The blocky generic buildings donā€™t helpā€¦

Sorry!

This new one does not do it for me.

16 Likes

Yeah, I thought that was just my trainer being weird. But Iā€™ve definitely noticed times when the resistance certainly didnā€™t match what I was seeing on screen. For example it might feel like 6% when the map in the top right tells me itā€™s 0% or 1% (even allowing a few seconds for turbo response lag).

3 Likes

me too, there is this right turn somewhere where you get onto this long streched right bend that seems to be an incline but says -1%.

Cheers, Matz

and besides: there are way too much branches sticking out of the roads.

2 Likes

Iā€™m quite surprised the Tour de France 2019 route wasnā€™t available today.
Only joking.
New York is great. Nice and creative.
Back to the first commentā€¦ when will the TdF world be ready? :wink:

I am loving everything about this tour, except Zwift did not seem to consider those of us runners who are actually running the NYC marathon when they gave a 10 day block to complete this. Is there any way that either the stages can be offered on more days, or a few ā€œmake upā€ days be added for those of us running on Sunday? PLEASE :pray:

As said before, I really like NY. But riding NY a lot these few days, there was something I noticed. At some intersections my avatar wanted to go left or right, depending on direction, into the city. I noticed a blinking indicator, and I wasnā€™t the only avatar with those blinking errows. Does the team at Zwift has more in store fore us, or is this just a glitch? :thinking:

You can turn down your trainer resistance and you wonā€™t be affected by the gradients.

I think itā€™s too small. Graphics are top notch but the map canā€™t handle the current volume of riders. Watopia is so much better. Not sure why you are releasing all these small maps when your projected winter load must be too big for them. It just needed to be twice as big.

2 Likes

Iā€™ve ridden two routes of NYC now, and while I like the regular expansions, I found the route around the park itself really repetitive, a little boring although the rolling terrain is nice. The other route which took me up the KOM and to the view of the skyline also got old pretty quick.

I think part of the trouble is the graphics are so good, that my old iPad struggles to keep up, so many of the parts that make it great are dropped automatically so I canā€™t experience them.
Routes like Innsbruck are great, and I appreciated when the dust effect was reduced in watopia to help people like me. I just feel that as the platform progresses, Iā€™ll be left behind

I think this block of three days will make it 12 out of the last 15 days NYC. This is easily far too often.

7 Likes

I totally love climbs, but i have to agree. Especially for workouts in ERG mode, some more flat routes would be nice. And especially right now, when almost every day is NY-day.

3 Likes