Currently virtual shifting uses some pre-defined gear setups. This is nice to mimic outdoor bike performance, but zwift is a virtual world and tbf comparing speed in zwift to speed outdoors is already comparing apples to pears. So why limit zwift to what’s possible in the real world?
So here’s my suggestions: Allow infinite shifting.
What?
- Have an infinite number of gears instead of the usual 10-12
- When shifting increase/decrease power by a fixed amount (eg 5 Watt, but could be configurable)
Why?
- There’s often a rather large jump in power between two gears, too much to be compensated by just increasing or decreases cadence, this would allow for much more fine grained control.
- No longer run out of gears in a descent.
- Don’t worry that your legs won’t be able to handle the climb, there’s always an extra gear.
- FTP tests: I find it extremely hard to find the right gear to do the 20 minute free ride portion of an ftp test. Usually the difference between two gears is way too large. So I can’t ride at the power I estimate I can do for 20 minutes, because the difference is so large that I can’t make up for it by increasing or decreasing cadence. In the end this results in a failed ftp test.
You’re describing how resistance control works when you pair via the QZ app (qzfitness.com). It’s not like Zwift virtual shifting which tries to replicate bicycle shifting - it’s just resistance up/down. Talk to @Roberto_Viola if that interests you.
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hi @Glenn_Van_Loon let me know if you have any questions
I guess the reason is that there’s a finite amount of resistance available on the trainer and although you can put an infinite number of steps between 0 and 1 you’ll soon reach a point where you won’t notice any degree of change.
They have to find a spot, at least for default gearing, where with a simple up/down sequential button, which will both minimise the number of presses you have to do to find a ratio you’re happy with, and maximise the choice available. And they are obvious competing, fewer presses, gives you less choice and vice-versa.
With the 20-odd ratios they have now it’s pretty good imo. I do a few double gear changes occasionally (which I end up doing IRL too because I have a 14-28 junior cassette on my bike), but mostly I can go through the gears sequentially.
If you added another gear between each of those 20 gears, doubling the amount that would really just mean I had to press the gear change button twice as much, doing some 4-gear changes and mostly doubles - even if I found a few situations where the in between gears worked, overall it probably would be a bigger pain than a help.
Now repeat that because you want to add more and more steps so between the 40 gears we go to 60 or 80 or 100, past a googol and graham’s number and well I’m going to have to press a button more and more times to get to a gear I want. I’d barely perceive any difference in the gearing but it would take a month to change gear.
But, wait a second - they already have infinite gearing where you don’t even need a click or play controllers. You can just choose what resistance you want to feel and pedal away at your preferred cadence. If you go uphills or downhills the resistance and cadence stay exactly the same. And you can adjust this by changing the power in increments of 1 watt, and also change it by level and a bunch of different ways.
And that mode is called ‘erg mode’ - erg mode does exactly what you want, it’s not infinite, but you can set the resistance you want to feel in steps of 1 watt from your trainer’s lowest resistance to its highest. I think the easiest way to use this in zwift is to remove the ‘controllable’ part in zwifts pairing screen and connect the trainer to another app like wahoos or a bike computer that lets you engage erg mode and alter the resistance.