Initial Feedback / User Experience

The Archives Archived: Zwift Feedback
1

Comments from my first ride:

  • Awesome!  :D
  • For first-time user log-in, would be great to have a walk-thru tutorial.
  • If user has not entered weight, require an input prior to letting them pair their device.  I was excited and hopped on my bike to ride prior to entering my weight online - aka I was unintentionally cheating.
  • Surprised I don’t see “bike/gear weight” on user profile … seems like a pretty critical component, although maybe the software is accounting for this mass in the background (with an assumption it is constant from user-to-user).
  • Wondering if Zwift is simply integrating the steady-state power curve of my fluid trainer, or if they take into account the flywheel mass?  aka, accounting for flywheel mass would result in a power boost when increasing wheelspeed, and should zero-out power when I am coasting.  Didn’t pay explicit attention to this one, but will for my next ride (maybe later today?? hah).
2

Second ride comment:

  • Loving it even more!
  • From my previous comments: power gauge (based on my Kurt Kinetic speed) seemed to work well, although there may be an opportunity for some filtering (could be a bit jumpy at times).
  • When drafting on the downhill, I was attempting to coast behind another rider but it was very difficult to “lock on” to his tail.  Seemed like there was a bit of instability in the power calculations (maybe I was jumping in+out of his wake?).  In the real world, I could have tapped my brakes to match speed and stay behind him.  Potential remedy: use a tie-in with cadence/power - don’t initiate a downhill pass unless the rider really kicks up one or the other.
  • Although the weather here is nice out, I anticipate this will be a great alternative when things get busy at work.  I don’t have a great place to ride near my house, so it will be easier to roll out of bed, throw some shorts on, and walk downstairs (then take a shower in my own home) v. loading everything in my car and later using the not-so-clean and not-so-convenient showers at work.
  • Some co-workers have been bugging me to join Strava for a while, but until this weekend I had not (I previously used Garmin software + my own spreadsheet).  As a direct result of joining the Zwift community, I decided to create a Strava account.  I have found that these two programs compliment each other well.  One setback: my pre-Strava ride on Zwift was not uploaded - not a big deal for a single ride, but may be a big deal for someone who rides on Zwift for a while before signing-up for Strava.
3

You can upload the missing ride file(s) to Strava by downloading from the zwift website or finding the file in Documents/Zwift/Activities on the machine on which you’re running Zwift.

4

Great, thx Christian.

Third ride comments:

  • Still very awesome - great alternative to the inclement weather.
  • Noted a weird spike in my speed @ start of ride … spiked to ~26mph with little effort.
  • Had multiple issues with other riders disappearing and reappearing.  Looked like they dropped off in entire sections of the course - once in a while near me and other times away from me.
5

Thanks for the feedback!

The sudden spike in feed is a known issue with initially pairing devices.

If you’re seeing all riders disappearing and reappearing for you, it’s likely that your Internet connection is dropping; if it’s just one or two, it’s likely that their connection is having problems.