I’ve been riding with Yumi for a while right now, advertised as 217w on 75kg, I’m averaging 201w on 76.5kg.
In order to achieve this, are you aiming for the game to become server authoritative in the future?
I’m not sure, it’s definitely not up to me to decide that.
That would be a huge change from what I know, with what seems very little benefit to me…
I think there are more valuable features and things to improve for you all.
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I disagree with the suggestion that you should not be able to pass someone unless the watts you are doing would have made you faster than they if you weren’t in the draft. IRL you can slingshot a draft and pass the person in front of you without doing more watts than they are. Otherwise sprint leadouts wouldn’t be a thing, whoever has the most Watts would always win, but in reality, you can use draft to accelerate past someone while doing fewer Watts than they are. PD4 is fine in this respect.
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And IRL if I was following a fast bunch like I did yesterday even at very high speed I’d not be having to push 5.5w/kg to stay on, I’d be doing easy watts because I have the huge draft and trying not to run into the wheel of the folk ahead.
This is not how it is in Zwift.
Edit: just did another Constance group ride, again with high watts/kg for lots of riders. One rider left a small gap which opened up at LAX and the entire group was dropped by the Robo Pacer. Even riders chasing back at 5.8w/kg couldn’t catch the pacer.
Average was lower today at 43.9km/h but it feels like you get no draft at all near the back of the group and if someone leaves the smallest gap we have to sprint like mad to not get dropped.
Whatever changed from last week when I first tried PD4 to now, I prefer PD3 over PD4 on current behaviour.
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Got the client update today and did my first PD4 ride, Herd’s Kick it Up ride (1.9-2.1 w/kg). This is generally right at the edge of my ability for an hour and it played out similarly today - from what I noticed, when I had trouble hanging onto the pack, it was when the people directly in front of me were moving at 2.3-2.5 and I was significantly slower. As long as I had energy (the first 45 minutes or so), if needed I could put in a little dig and get back on. If I kept up with the pack, I could move up or hang on, and sometimes found myself all the way at the front of the pack.
On a slower ride, I’d probably have been fine, but we probably would have had the same issue: people thinking they need to keep going faster than the beacon to stay in the lead pack, so the pack goes faster, so people need to go faster to stay on the people who are speeding up, etc. It will be interesting to see if people on D rides gradually slow down as they realize they shouldn’t need to go harder to stay with the beacon.
Surely the beacon should be telling people to slow down or get kicked out (or zapped by the fence).
I suggest some of the above posters watch this video (credit to Jasper Verkuijl) and amend their thinking. Drafting in the bunch is not a complete walk in the park when the speed gets sufficiently high, and things like corners and general micro gaps open up. Consequently, greater frequency of accelerations and decelerations also incurs fatigue and pack attrition, especially since attacks are not conducted at a steady pace; they are turbulent. You can momentarily ride sub 200W — perhaps even coast — but you absolutely will require power bursts and/or spikes.
The only time where wishful, compact “blob” racing results within the peloton is during steady state velocity situations: tempo pacing at the front or tame attacks off the front. Any reactionary bridge attempts will proceed to string/line out the peloton, depending on how aggressive the racing. More power input will hurt those toward the back more. Those at the back — particularly in a larger bunch, still need the aforementioned burst of power. Again, see the video example above.
Zwift single-file drafting in a small bunch of riders (about 5) is actually adequate.
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i sit last wheel as a rule on zwift, and have done since pd2. i’m too unhealthy to actually contest a sprint right now but i’m really not experiencing whatever difficulty it is other people are at the back in pd4. possibly if the average pace was over 4wkg it would feel different, i doubt it seriously.
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This sort of describes what I noticed quite well. It doesn’t pay to be at the back of the high speed groups, you have to stay glued to the robo pacer or have to do big acceleration to get back the small gaps.
I’m not in Jasper’s league these days after my crash but I can hold some power for a while, just not maximum I used to have. So I notice these things. I hang onto wheels very carefully!
What I don’t understand is first time I tried PD4 was okay but now it’s not. Same groups but I’m pushing 20 watts higher average now.
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It’s just the normal fluctuations for a ride at that pace - the fence is live so nobody gets too far ahead, most people don’t really stay far ahead of the beacon, they just cycle back and forth. It’s only an issue for people in my specific position; on the slower group rides the Herd does, I would be one of the people moving up and back without issue, but on this one, I’m just weak enough over an hour for the differences to affect me.
I knew this would be a bit over a pace I could easily manage, so I thought it would be a better test than a slower ride. If memory serves, the one other time I tried this ride, I couldn’t catch up once I fell off (other than with the help of sweeps), so it felt like PD4 helped me out a bit, but that could also be me just remembering that other time incorrectly.
This would not be in a sprint situation but let’s say up to 300W because of Steady Z2/Z3 Riders making a group much faster.
IRL if you follow a wheel at 35km/h you can’t just pass a rider infront that is doing 225W with 150W…when you will get out of draft you will not step on the pedals and increase your power…in zwift you just ride pass them and give them draft so they can accelerate more.
I agree…i was watching the video yesterday and thinkin of posting 
The steady blob in zwift is just to fast…in my est. for about 3km/h.
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This doesn’t happen anymore with PD4. You get autobraked if your speed is higher but the power is lower than the rider in front of you. Instead, everybody in the front of the pack are pushing the pace to prevent auto braking, hurting people in the back of the pack.
On a separate note, I am still not sure if autobraking is applied based on raw power or wkg. If it is applied based on raw power, this puts lower wkg higher watt riders at a greater disadvantage overall.
You are autobraked only if your power drops from your last 10s avg for X% and the draft is under X%.
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No.
It does take into account your relative speed to the rider in front of you, but not relative power as I remembered.
If that’s happening, I bet people adapt over time. Indeed, I’d assumed the project was mostly about limiting surging by teaching people how to ride in ways that don’t trigger auto-braking (especially in the absence of real-life feedback), rather than relying on auto-braking itself. (My assumption may well have been wrong, because there was some question about always showing the red flashing numbers, but I think people will adapt given feedback.)
This can’t be a goal of PD4 because it requires a precise understanding of how PD4 works from every rider, which is impossible to achieve. PD4 relies on auto-braking to reduce churning at the front of the pack, but auto-braking has had some unintended consequences at the back of the pack as well, making it harder for people to take advantage of drafting, especially when everyone at the front of the pack are pushing at a constant pace to not get auto-braked.
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Agree to disagree. I can easily throw a ball back and forth with someone over good distance without understanding projectile physics or human anatomy. It’s a matter of experience and feedback.
If you need to change the behavior (how someone throws the ball), you need to explain them how throwing works, don’t you think? A very small percentage of Zwift riders are reading these forums and learning about how PD4 works.
Auto-braking is the reason PD4 effectively reduces pack speed, not change in rider behavior. If anything, change in rider behavior (maintaining power at the front of the pack) in response to PD4 might reduce it’s effectiveness.
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