Rode the TdZ Stage 8 Champs event this morning at 545 PST. The start was incredibly chaotic! Looked like a bunch of 8 year old Cat 5 racers except 8 yo’s have some sense of accident avoidance (Cat 5’s don’t). I have never seen anything like that in several hundred race/ride starts. Since Paris wasn’t on the guest world calendar today, the fact you could see other riders not in the event wasn’t bothersome. That might be different with the potential of hundreds on there at the same time. Weird…
While this is welcome news it feels like we’re being asked to beta test it. Lots of getting stuck behind riders, getting overtaken and not being able to get on and in general very rough on the edges. Making these surges to go past people is un-natural and how you burn matches in races. On the other hand going through people was never realistic…
I love the fact you’re concentrating on the physics rather than, say, the landscape, but it currently feels very clunky and not release candidate…
That’s exactly what it is.
Are the new pack dynamics enabled full time, everywhere?
No, not yet. We are still in development and testing this in selected events.
Nothing wrong with that, and it’s a necessary step. If Zwift aren’t set up for large-scale simulation, testing with real people is about the best way to see what happens in a real situation. Even if Zwift do have lots of simulated connections to play with, they won’t behave like real people.
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In the New Packs Dynamics, riders jump ahead erratically. I find it unsettling. Gives me a headache.
I rode a TdZ stage in france this morning and had the same experience. Riders seemed to jump forward a lot and catching up with riders in front.
I also rode a TdZ makeup stage today and found it kind of better than two days ago. It could be because we were fewer riders in the group, but it was less lateral movement. Some riders were often thrown 5+ meters to the side and came back to the group just as fast. The normal rider movements are very binary. Riders are jumping between lanes in a very unnatural manner. Especially when many riders were fighting for space. This should be made smoother. I think the sticky draft was less noticeable. It seems like the rider does not seek the draft of the other riders in front as aggressively as one could expect.
There is something funky happening at the front of the group that works the same for new and old AI. If I place myself just behind the front riders, I can do less W/Kg than in the middle of the field. That must be wrong. Also, being at the front should be much harder. I think the CdA must be higher to make it more realistic. The drafting effect should also be higher.
I started in a normal group ride after the TdZ stage for comparison and found that the movements were much smoother. The shape of the group was also much tighter which made it easier to draft and hold the group together.
It is of course hard to know if my observations are imagination or not.
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Hey Russell, I’ll DM you for a link to your footage. Thanks for offering this!
Mark
Jeff, lot of work going on for steering but still a small portion of hardware and members who have it enabled. We’re getting closer to setting up Steering Only events as well as enabling it on the majority of our experiences.
DM me if you have additional feedback you’d like me to connect with the product managers and engineers working on steering.
Also, here’s our weekly 70ish ZQH steering races:
Mark
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Great points, all are being considered right now.
Mark
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Cheers Mark - link on its way to you.
R
Tried the new dynamics this morning just for fun.
Interesting at some point during the ride we started seeing riders not in the event and after about 10 minutes it went back to only event riders.
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I rode stage 7 yesterday and after we went through the banner after completing the first lap, all the time/distance to other zwifters went to 0.00 on the riders nearby list. Confirmed with others that they were all seeing the same thing. By the time we got to the top of the jungle a few minutes later it all went back to normal and was fine for the rest of the stage. We didn’t see others from outside the event, just strange issues with the time/distance from others in the event.
I did two makeup stages on Sunday–Innsbruckring and Road to Sky. The Innsbruck was rather sparsely populated (maybe 50ish riders?). For part of the time I was solo as I was bridging up after a late start. I was only in a “pack” for fairly short time, but was with 1-2 other riders for awhile. The dynamic seemed “jumpy”–almost quantum–where the other rider would move from behind me to in front of me, then behind me.
A couple of other riders in that same event rather strangely time-shifted according to the placement chart on the right side of the display. For example, after I had passed one of them, they suddenly slingshotted up the chart ahead of me by almost 3 minutes. Then about a minute later they were back to 30 seconds behind me. I’ve never seen that before. It could be coincidence and unrelated, but I figured it’s worth bringing up.
I believe that since the app rotates logs, I should still have the app log for that event if it would be helpful.
For my second event up alpe, I didn’t really notice anything, but it was mostly a solo effort. I did notice that there were people on the course that were not part of the event, which surprised me.
We’ve seen the same behavior on a TdZ stage today. Sometimes only event riders were visible, and sometimes others doing free rides or workouts in Watopia were also visible. This alternated back and forth more than once.
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Does this also change the way how zwift is telling my Direto to change resistance cause the incline changes?
Did Stage 3 at 19:30 german time and it felt a lot smoother than normal.
No. Pack Dynamics does not affect the pedal resistance on climbs / descents.
My Feedback from a catch up event;
The start always is usually lined out until blob forms. With this dynamic visually the riders where zig zagging all over the road during the line out as though avatars where fighting to find draft. Was a bit odd to visualize and not that pleasant. At the KOM forward junction turning left to Ocean tunnel, all the riders moved forward in a jagged rush for about 3 seconds, that’s definitely a glitch. (I normally average about 50 to 60fps in 4k, min 37fps). Once blob formed and everyone riding at same pace, the dynamics worked well. I enjoyed the draft and didn’t seem to have the front to back, back to front issues I normally have for same wkg.
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Is this change what makes individual riders surge forwards and backwards when riding in a group? I saw this behavior quite frequently in a TdZ makeup ride this morning.
I rode an event at the weekend with this on and it was so nauseating that I had to quit after 30 minutes - Volcano after party. Some riders were pinging forward then backwards randomly, others left to right. As someone said above it was like being in a beginners’ category IRL race where no one has any sort of ability to hold their line! The motion sickness I got from in was terrible. I did another catch up yesterday - Libby hill AP - and it wasn’t so bad but the group I was in was smaller and riding more slowly. I only saw the see-saw slingshot a couple of times and was actually able to complete the ride.
I also noticed it was easier to fall off the back of the group on a descent whereas the ZI article seems to indicate that the bunch wouldn’t travel so fast downhill, unless I read that wrong. Already struggle enough at times to stay in with a group of (heavier) men downhill so not keen on that becoming harder!
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