I’ve noticed running on Zwift is not as good of an experience as biking on zwift. With biking there are way more people and it is easy to slightly adjust ones effort to stay within a group assuming the group is riding around or below your ability level. For running, one sets the treadmill speed and that is about it. You rarely see anyone else running, and if you do, they typically are going much faster or much slower.
My new feature idea is to change it to be “virtual-squared” or “virtual-virtual” running (to coin a new term). Basically when one picks a route and starts running, the avatars of everyone else who is running at the same time virtually show up in a group around you. Likewise, your avatar pops up on everyone elses screen. The SW scales all the avatar speeds to roughly match your speed so the group automatically stays together. I’d suggest people in the group on the screen being roughly ordered based on their real steady running speed. If someone speeds up their treadmill, they then move through the pack to the front and likewise slowing down the treadmill moves you to the back. Then over time if you keep the new treadmill speed, your avatar gradually drifts back towards the middle wherever the ‘speed ordering’ algorithm determines that avatar should reside. For the group size, perhaps the server side SW would have a max group size cap and split bigger total number of runners into multiple fixed groups, assigning a particular group to a new runner? Or maybe it is a user option to roughly select the size of the group that will be running with that user?
I don’t know if this virtual group feature would attract new running users to the platform. However, I think the feature would keep people more engaged and give them a better overall experience.
Anyways, what do you think? Is this a good idea and should zwift look into implementing it to improve the running experience?