Keeping track of friends in the peloton

I am aware of the feature that allows you to see your friends on the minimap or in the rider list (if they are within 6 places of your position) but I think there should be something that shows which riders on the main screen are your friends. The challenge is that in many of rides, everyone is wearing the same kit and riding similar bikes. Additionally, there are riders constantly pulling ahead and falling behind. This makes it hard to see and keep track of your friends in a event or group ride.

It would be cool if maybe your friends names would always show above their avatar or if there was a “star” above the riders head. That way, you could easily assess where your friends are in a group. The minimap shows an approximation of where your friends are but it would be helpful to see their specific position.

I’ve tries Zwift GPS ( https://www.zwiftgps.com/ ) a couple of times, with some success. But I was trying to load it on my phone while the compute screen was showing the ride, so obviously a less than ideal set up. What you describe would be much nicer.

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As well as “friends” (which I guess means people you follow and who follow back; or maybe people you’ve favourited), once there’s in-game support for teams it’d be great to be able to easily spot them in the group as well.

And the “friend” icon in the rider list really isn’t clear enough. Not for me anyway. I’d like to see something clearer, e.g.

May be nice to set a nemesis or rival too, who’d get a skull and crossbones icon or something. :smiley:

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Single button toggle that turns everyone not a friend into a blue ghost…

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Yesterday, a bunch of local guys and I were on discord riding the fondo together. The point was to make it a social activity that we could all enjoy but it’s so hard to stay together in the group because you can’t see your friends in the giant peloton of riders. If positions were disabled, we would really have been out of luck! That was the only way we could even somewhat tell where everyone was. With the long line of riders eventually splitting into groups, it was difficult to tell which of our local riders were in which groups.

That’s my use case anyway. The blue rider toggle would be cool too. Just some way to keep track of your friends in the main display, similar to how you can see the rider leader or sweepers.

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Wouldn’t it be a simple thing (optional if necessary) to split the riders list into two parts. A part in which I only see my “friends” and a general part?

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Hi Tobias -

I think that would be a cool idea but addresses a different challenge, imo. Adding a list that was filtered by friends would help with seeing if you friends are in front or behind you and how how far away they are in seconds but it doesn’t tell you if they are in your group or in a different group that’s splitting off and heading up the road. It’s really less about the general whereabouts of my friends and more about finding their specific position in big groups.

Part of the problem is that every group ride and stage event has everyone wearing the same kit so it’s incredibly difficult to determine the specific positions of individuals in a group. If organizers would let people wearing their own jerseys, that might be enough to solve the problem but I’m not aware of any groups that do this.

Something like this…

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Another thought would be always show their name placard above their head in addition to showing random people around me.

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Hi Tim,
but in meetups there are already the green markings in the riders list. It would be enough if all (or a part) of the green riders (my friends) stayed on the riders list. Or if in a meetup only the riders in the list are shown and not all the riders around them. This could also be an optional setting creating a meetup.

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my wish would be to be able to organize my own small races with friends. You can see your 5-10 friends, recognize a faster group (in the meetup) and take up the pursuit. With the meetup this has already been introduced. Now it would be sufficient to hide the riders from the riders list outside of the meetup or to show the riders how far they are in front or behind (like in a public race).

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It’s true in meetings that there are green markings for friends but I don’t think you can join a meetup and be part of a group ride or stage event and at the same time. My concerned was primarily focused on keeping track of your friends in sea of people who all look the same.

You are right though - I think there is more work to be done on keeping people who are part of a meetup together too!

I think this would still be a great feature to add to Zwift, especially as the number of riders continues to grow.

Rode a group ride yesterday and it reminded me of this of issue. When everyone has the same bike and kit, it’s really hard to find and keep track of your friends on a group ride. Also, when the position numbers are hidden, it’s almost impossible to meet up with friends on a group ride because you just can’t find anyone within a mass of riders all dressed the same.

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This needs building yesterday. Me and my mate have the exact same problem. Spend the race wondering if the are in front or behind trying to scroll which doesn’t really work

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