I stand corrected but I think it is saved in the fit file that goes to ZP, so it can be checked.
Note that these e-sports rules do not govern all zwift racing, just a few elite events like the PD in ZRL, and probably the upcoming UCI worlds. Not community racing at all.
I like 50%, it seems to work for me, but I’m not going to criticise anyone else for doing differently. Watts are watts, using a different TD is no more cheating than changing gear is, and trainer feel varies across technologies anyway. Flywheel inertia is a lot less than my entire mass when accelerating!
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Talking of trainer difficulty, I’d love to see the effects of removing the artificial maximum descent slope emulation of 50%.
That would be the ideal scenario keep TD locked for descending no matter what slider is set to 
.
I’d really like to see the descent and ascent being two different sliders.
I’d set descent to zero but leave ascent to somewhere between 50% and 100% - I don’t really want to feel downhills but still want the uphills.
The trainer difficulty on descents is half of the set value.
TD 100 % up hill is 50% down hill.
TD 50% up hill is 25% down hill.
Just watched GP Lama do the test.
EDIT
I’m wrong.
Its the GRADIENT that changes.
This is what happens when old guys stay up late whatching You Tube videos and reading the Zwift Forums.
Sorry
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I’ve enjoyed reading this topic. One thing I don’t agree with is the idea you have to ride a high TD to get a training benefit for riding IRL. I rode a fluid trainer for years in the winters, long before there was such a thing as Zwift. I always got a huge benefit for riding and racing outdoors in the spring, and I live in a very hilly area.
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Maybe you should tell the TdF teams that before they tackle the next queen stage 
My knee knee consultant ordered to get off bike and walk for every up slope, ie. put no power through knees. So I put my zwift Difficulty to zero and spin. Needless to say, in racing I have to spin a lot faster on climbs or be dropped. Something that I find difficult to adjust to (after several years trying) is the delay between pedal power and what I see in the display. As I’m surged back and forth in a race front bubble, I see others seeming able to adjust their power output so as to remain a fairly stable position in the bubble. Does using a low Difficulty setting incur a response delay?
No. What is happening is you don’t have a lot of resistance to pedal against, power is a function of resistance and cadence if the resistance is very low you need a lot of cadence to generate power and even a bit of less cadence make your power drop because it is hard to spin at very high cadence.
If you race with trainer difficulty off, you will need to pay very close attention to notice when the group increases power on climbs, so if you are late to react you will drift out the back and have to surge even more to stay with the group. Everybody else (with TD higher) will immediately notice the climb as the resistance increases. If they keep cadence fairly constant and don’t shift, their power will naturally increase. To avoid having to spin really fast when the group increases power on the climb, you’ll have to shift gears. A compromise might be to set TD very low but not zero, so you get a little bit of feedback in the legs when the road goes up.
I struggle to read the jumping text on the right showing riders’ w/kg so that might account for some of my race ineptitude. Actually, if the circuit hasn’t any steep sections, I do use TD around 25% just to tune in a bit better to the invisible terrain gradient changes. I do also spin a fair bit, when legs are feeling OK, up to 130rpm is fine, so I have a wide cadence range to play with.
But Paul, I appreciate your perspective and will try to be more attentive to the power figures that I can see (another reason for dis-ease concerning racers who do the on/off power riding (5w/kg then 1 then 5 …).
I’ve worked with various systems that allowed signal averaging or other processing, and they often incurred an intrinsic delay. Like the way an averaging trend curve in Excel will incur a delay. I just thought that perhaps a similar technique might be used in Zwift.
One way or another, the 5 or 6 second delay is a challenge.
BTW re. all the talk here of imposing TD, I’m not looking forward to that. Nor the implication of the need for triple chainrings and granny gears.
Don’t try to follow the w/kg in the rider’s list. Just follow the pack, try to stay in the front 10%.
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Sim mode seems totally busted on Zwift, and I always have it set to 100%. I have a tacx neo 2, and get power from my assioma duo pedals and even in the 53/11 gear it won’t provide any meaningful resistance. It’s only effective up steep climbs, but I have no problems pushing my 39/30 up alpe and ven top. With ERG mode the same trainer and setup is able to give me resistance on point that would conincide with gear choices in Zwift. Probably the best advantage in zwift would be to unpair FEC and set the trainer to slope mode controlled by a head unit.
Do you have the Tacx set as the controllable device? We use Neo2s, and sim mode works just fine (one on ATV, on via an iPad).
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No problems with sim mode with my Neo 2 using Windows and ANT-FEC.
Your symptoms sound similar to problems I’ve experienced when two devices are fighting for control of the trainer. For example, my Garmin watch can pair with the Neo as a (controllable) trainer. I don’t allow it to make this pairing as it can result in chaos, with feeble resistance as a result.
If I do want the watch to control the trainer (I have in the past, but not any more) I need to be sure that Zwift does not also try to exert control. Sometime a connection can stick, even when you think you’ve broken the connection, and then it’s very difficult to resolve without shutting everything down and starting from scratch.
I suspect using the Tacx App or something else with trainer control features (head unit) could also bugger things up.
1000 times yes! Not all watts are created equal, a fact that so many dismiss in Zwift. In fact, watts themselves as a measure of effort are wildly wrong for people over 50.
Low RPM watts are significantly harder on the body and more difficult to recover from and maintain. This is obvious to anyone with actual endurance sports experience, but beginners seem to still not get it. It amazes me that this is something we even have to discuss.
There is no “fair” racing in Zwift, period. My Wahoo KICKR Bike has zero power loss in the drive train compared to other trainers. Am I cheating? What about when I race at 100% trainer difficulty with only a 36-30 to face 12% race hill grade? What about when I lose all the sprints to someone who is spinning 95 RPM up that hill at the same speed as me just a minute later? Am I cheating if I drop my trainer difficulty to 20% (like I’m hearing everyone does)? What about beginners on cheaper virtual bikes who haven’t earned their Tron bike yet? What about steering (now)? This is why Olympic Esport cycling goes to such lengths to ensure the equipment is similar.
In a very real way, Zwift is pay-to-win (like buying better heroes and gear in other video games). Zwift is also pain-to-win because the more time you put in the better chance you have of winning for lots of reasons that have zero to do with fitness at all.
Then there is body weight. Even if people are honest why should lighter people go faster? There’s no actually f**** wind! I would love an option to compete only based on pure watts without weight so I could DESTROY those toothpicks that would snap an Ulna if they brushed their teeth too briskly. It’s virtual, so why the hell not?
All I can say is THANK GOD people cannot hide their RPMs during a race. Nothing gives away someone who has a low trainer difficulty setting, or is racing on a triple, or whatever else, then seeing them spinning away on 10+% grades. I’m like, “aha, okay, I see you now.” I’m free to judge them and them me. It’s (friendly) competition after all. I do wish RPM at every second was recorded for Zwift Power. That will easily allow everyone to weed out those who weren’t actually competing with the same equipment even though nothing is wrong with changing your equipment for a race, like in real life. Hell, I’d love to follow people who are committed to riding the same equipment on group rides so it all feels more accurate. That’s really the only way to have good, accurate fun competition.
On random races, I’ve recently decided to just f*** it and set my trainer difficulty to 20% like everyone else and stop feeling guilty about it. Normally I’m 100% because I enjoy the hills and reality on my hydraulic KICKR bike, but it’s not worth getting dropped on a competitive 40km with rolling hills because I actually feel them and no one else does.
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Welcome to the dark side. Even at 100% Trainer Difficulty I have 50 pretend gears and can shift large or small jumps with my choice of a button.
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On this topic i think the events can be setup to use 100% Trainer Difficulty. Maybe @James_Zwift or @DavidP can confirm this.
Why this is not used more is because you have some trainers that will max out at 6% Gradients and others at 25%…do you think that’s Fair?
But the fact you are on a kickr bike means you can set you gears to be anything you like, single, double or triple and up 13 speed cassette with anything from 10 to 50 teeth. So by all means set you trainer difficulty to 100% but you can easily negate that on a hilly race but changing the whole gearing setup.
A rider with a bike on a trainer are stuck with whatever gears their bike has, suppose they live somewhere pretty flat and lowest gear is so they have 53/36 and 11/28, they should change trainer difficulty to allow them to compete on the radio mast or else they will be doing single leg leg presses.
I do hate this macho 100% or it’s not real. None of it’s real.
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