Pack Dynamics 4 Release [April 2023]

It seems like you don’t know what the word means. It’s difficult to have a discussion on a mildly technical subject when people use words incorrectly. It leads to frequent misunderstandings.

1 Like

And yet during that fraction of a second his speed (as reported on the screen) dropped from 36 to 35kph even though he should have been continuing to accelerate. It’s not just that he felt a bit more draft for a fraction of a second, his speed was abruptly cut meaning a large loss of kinetic energy that had to be replenished.

1 Like

I’ve watched it numerous times, and whilst I can’t be certain whether it’s intentional or not, the slight slowdown does seem reasonable to stop you flying through the pack from behind. Maybe it’s a bug… maybe not. I’m a bit lost now as to the details of the algorithm, but it seems pretty reasonable.

On a separate know, your system is struggling so hard there’s a decent chance you are suffering from all sorts of lag with rider positioning. Give that screen a cleanup, enable GPU acceleration in sauce, or even better run most of those sauce windows on a different device using the browser.

This is exactly what happens in IRL. Trust me, I was there last week and the slowdown due to riders in front over the crest followed by the inevitable acceleration is brutal and that’s where I got dropped.

didn’t watch any of the videos but you’re probably right. before i built a dedicated PC and just ran zwift from an office laptop i would regularly have to average ~.5wkg more than everyone else in a race just because the game ran at like 5fps. there’s probably a technical reason behind that somewhere. this was back in pd2 though so who knows.

as far as getting autobraked… well, the way i perceive it works is that the dynamics probably are unfavourable to people who aren’t particularly steady riders, but i don’t personally see that as a problem. riding smoothly isn’t a bad habit for anyone to pick up

1 Like

doesn’t look like a big deal to me. it’s not like you got spat out the back, you just settled in normally right? if that happened to me i wouldn’t have paid any attention to it

i agree it can be dicey at the top of climbs, i usually make a small effort to get to the front of the pack right before i get to the summit just to avoid any issues

1 Like

I don’t think this is specific to PD4. Happened prior to this and also don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.

or 35.51km/h to 35.49km/h

If there was no red numbers the rider would not even notice that fraction of a second.

1 Like

yeah, you might be right. it’s a habit i’ve always had anyway. i haven’t had to change anything about the way i ride for pd4, that’s for sure

I’ve definitely crested a couple of wheels behind on PD3 and been rapidly dropped going over the top.

Which is what I expected to happen :slight_smile:

I thought auto brake was only part of PD4. Anyways this was 12 days ago.

This is just physics William.

I would highly doubt there was even a remote chance of me flying through the pack. As a D rider in an A race the out of the pen pace would be too great. You can tell how far the front have pulled after just a few seconds.

I think it is huge, when we factor in many races have fts or FAL. Something like Alley sprint, they are long and good chance people lose power for a micro of a second. But the sprints are also decided by hundredth of a second.

I think that is the reason people brought this up, they it isn’t.

At 300 watts on the flats in the draft I should continue to accelerate to 45kmh.

Just wondering if this is a feature or a bug. And if it was a feature what is the intent?

I absolutely agree that you were unfairly braked and it cost you some speed, but as a minor detail on the start, it looked to me that you were left standing at the line just for a second or two. I always turn the pedals over slowly in a fairly high gear as the clock runs down from 15s and then stand up for a few pedal strokes just on about the 2 or 1s mark so that I’m hitting big watts as the gate opens.

1 Like

I know that I have a couple seconds of lag in my system so I start spinning up with about 5s to go and try to jump hard at about 2s to go so that I am actually accelerating out of the pens as the banner drops. One of the reasons I make sure to always be at the front of the pen. It’s not like being 10-20 m ehead is going to mean I’m going to make a break and run the whole race solo, but it does give a cushion for that lag so I’m not already on my back foot chasing when everyone is already going full out at the start.

1 Like

In all the races I’ve done in A over the years, I’ve barely touch over 400w and never get dropped out the gate. Always been lost with this unnecessary sprinting out the gate stuff. But that’s a different point completely. On Zwift well before PD4 there has always been a power range that keeps you in a similar drafting position. Learning the lower end of that is good efficient riding. I think PD4 just makes that more the case.

Braked after sprinting to hang in with the group, definitely not out front:

It’s working as intended. You reduced your power from sprinting to 105w. You got slowed down. This is how it was designed to work, whether you like it or not.

2 Likes