Hi guys, I am brand new on zwift and did my first training round yesterday, have to get used to basically everything & I feel I don’t understand anything. My most urgent questions:
when I see thumbs up on the rider list on the right who is meant there, me??
who are the others riders one encounters there. I mean I understand that I can get info about them but are they riding the same training or the same route or are they from a sminilar performance level or are they some selected by countries? I mean there is no way that everyo0n sees everyone world wide who is logged in and at the same time at the same virtual place, right? That should be gazillions …
Hi Raphael, the Zwift UI can sometimes seem overwhelming at first but you’ll soon get used to it.
When you see a thumbs up on the rider list that’s because that rider has given you a thumbs up or because they’ve done a PB on a section, finished a workout or something like doing an ftp test. You can click the thumb to send them a thumbs up.
That list is the riders who are close to you on the same section of road. The maximum number of people logged in at any one time is rarely more than 30k, and there’s plenty of roads to go around.
Please do keep asking questions, people here are always helpful.
They are all real people riding on that same stretch of road (there are a very small number of Robopacer bots that you can ride with, but these are pretty obvious because they look like robots).
The others you can see on the screen (and the Riders Nearby list, which shows only those going in the same direction as you, not those on the other side of the road) are on the same stretch of road as you but not necessarily doing the same route (some might be, others not).
Some riders might be doing a workout, and for those ones you see they appear to have a translucent display screen/tablet on the front of their bikes. Others may well be doing a free ride. If you’re in an event (including races) then you typically see only those riders in that same event, and not anyone else outside the event on that same stretch of road. Similarly if you’re not in an event you typically don’t see anyone who might be in an event and riding near to you.
You will see all different performance levels - some people faster than you and some slower. Some people have very accurate trainers (which reflect their actual effort very closely) whereas some other people have highly inaccurate setups (e.g. spin bikes). So don’t take any notice of how fast/slow others are going, and concentrate on yourself.
Hi Steve, thanks for great advice and detailed explanations! That is all quite good to know. I read that the app shows only like 100 riders at most, and that many more could be possible looged in and at the same position, in that case I wonder how these 100 are selected. Thanks again!
I don’t know for sure, but it seems like it’s just the 100 closest to you, or selected in a semi-random way. There’s certainly nothing you can read into why it’s showing you those particular riders rather than others, other than them being near to you. It doesn’t show more so as to save the amount of work the Zwift game app needs to do in calculating all their positions and drawing them all.
