I use an Elite Realaxiom wired trainer (version 6), and everything works fine with Zwift, except my wattage is low. I’ve seen this question addressed elsewhere and people have talked about calibrating their RAWs using the Elite software, but this doesn’t seem to have worked for me.
I recently bought a Powerpod power meter, and while it’s not a direct force power meter, it is calibrated correctly (I checked with their support team) and shows my real-world watts to be a fair bit higher than what I can obtain in Zwift. I’ve suspected my watts were low for a while, but had nothing to compare it to.
Has anyone else had success adjusting their p1, p2 and p3 Realaxiom values and noticing an improvement in the accuracy of their wattage in Zwift?
For the Zwift team, is there any kind of workaround you can suggest for an issue like this?
The Powerpod unit doesn’t really work with Zwift, I don’t think, so I can’t rely on it as a paired power meter with the program.
I have updated my P values and it does make a difference when using Elite Real software but not in Zwift.
I don’t think any of the wired Realaxiom trainers save the P values on the trainer, it saves it in the Real Elite software and then the software add a factor to the calibration.
I think Zwift has to do something in there software to deal with the P values. This has been asked in some other posts.
Sadly I dont think this is very high on there list of important updates.
Gerrie is correct: The P values can only be directly added to the Elite software, and they aren’t able to be saved to the trainer for use in Zwift.
While having a way to calibrate these older Elite trainers would be nice, Zwift currently doesn’t allow for direct modification of the P values in the game because there’s no way to verify their accuracy, and they directly modify the wattage values the trainer transmits. See our known issue article for some suggested workarounds and more information on this.
As a side note, I’m definitely not the final authority on this in terms of future development - this is simply a summary of where we’re at now and the why behind it.
Thanks for your replies. I understand the reasons behind it as well and appreciate the summary of the info you’ve provided, Jason. Like Gerrie, I’m really happy Zwift made it possible for us to use our trainers, as I use Zwift all the time, and haven’t even gone back to the Elite software since. If there could be something done in the future, that would be great, but I suppose in a couple of years I may have saved up enough to pick up a more modern unit, anyway.
If I can just add my own feelings on it: there are other variables, such as rider weight, which can’t be verified, either. The amount the trainer brake/wheel is tightened to the bike’s rear wheel on non-direct drive trainers is something else that people can adjust. Just spitballing here, and I think other people have suggested this as well, but perhaps real-world Strava or Garmin efforts could somehow be taken into account. For example, if a certain gradient, cadence and heart rate create a certain speed and wattage in Zwift, and the same effort could be shown to produce a similar result in a real-world effort (e.g., through the provision of a GPX file), then the calibration for a certain trainer could be “verified”. As you know, certain Zwift races will disqualify riders with an average w/Kg effort that cannot be substantiated with a real-world ride file, so couldn’t it work in a similar way for riders with trainers that have variable or unreliable power measuring capacities?
I know it would be a lot of work that maybe can’t be done, and ultimately, that’s fine. I’m just happy to be able to use Zwift. But for personal, training purposes, and considering most of middle-of-the-bunch (or lower) riders like me would never be a threat for a green jersey or race win, anyway, it would be really cool if there was a way to make it work.
Thought I’d chip into this old thread rather than start a new one. First, thanks to Zwift for supporting the RealAxiom Wired (I have v6 as well). As far as I can tell, Zwift is the only 3rd party product that will work with the trainer and it has transformed it into something useful for me. [And I’ve lost 22 pounds in 9 months!]
But, like the others, I am beginning to think there is an absolute wattage limit or just low wattage readings in general on the trainer. Recently I started doing workouts … and the other day I tried one where I was going to be asked to do at least 3 x my FTP (or 702w) in four short bursts. I simply cannot ever generate that much power on my Elite trainer. In a 50/12 gear, doing 120-125 rpm, I’ll hit maybe 480w and that is it.
However, the other day, my Elite simply wouldn’t connect to Zwift and I wanted to do that same workout. So I hooked up an older dumb trainer, a Cycle Ops Fluid 2, with a speed and cadence setup … so Zwift is estimating power. In those same sprints I got power estimates from Zwift that peaked out at 800-1000w. Several months ago I used a different bike with a different Cycle Ops Fluid 2 (in another location) and it too gave me power in sprints of 600-700w and I wasn’t going quite as flat out like in this training.
Last, but not least, I put a power meter on that other bike, and based on “feel” I would guess that the w/(perceived effort) ratio I see on the road is higher than in Zwift, although this evidence is hardly scientific.
I don’t have a problem during workouts, did you set the resistance of the trainer to MAX during the workout (using the buttons on the Elite console or the resistance buttons on the Zwift modile Link (ZML) app) ?
My situation is during free ride/races, the trainer does not add enough resistance on flat roads. I can do the whole Watopia in my big blade.
Thanks for the tip … I assume you do not mean the Zwift trainer difficulty setting that is set inside the app. You just mean the manual resistance buttons on the little plastic controller for the Elite, or/equivalently the resistance buttons in the mobile app? Don’t ask me why, but it had not even occurred to me to try that. I will give it a shot, thanks!
Interesting that you can ride all of Watopia in the big ring. You may well be a much stronger (and/or lighter) rider than I am. When I go up the mountain, I am definitely in the small ring. On the flat routes I do not need the small ring. On the hilly route, I can’t quite remember if I ever switch to the small ring. I usually have to switch to it if the gradient goes to 7 or 8% or more.
Your assumption is correct, us the “resistance buttons on the little plastic controller” or the app, they work.
I may be strong but im not light.
The thing is with the older wired trainers it needed to be calibrated in the software (P1,P2 and P3 values) and unfortunately Zwift cant do that. You are lucky that yours simulate the hills and flat road better.
Have fun with the resistance buttons in workout mode.
I’ve been having the same issue with seeing much lower power output (and thus speed) in Zwift, compared to my real life experience.
This caused me to not ride with others in Zwift since it was impossible to keep up with anyone!
I played around with tire pressure and how tight I ajdusted the pressure of the roll against the wheel
By upping tire pressure to 120psi (I ride with 100 on the road) and only doing 3 twists (not entire 3 turns) on the knob adjusting the barrel against the wheel. I was able to get wattage output that was much closer to the expected output and I was able to actually keep up with people in the game.
Thanks for the suggestion, Henrik. I tried it this morning before the Kitten ride and unfortunately the only thing it changed was my tire slippage (which worsened). Maybe we run different versions of the RealAxiom. Cheers.
Have a good evening!