New York? Yorkshire?
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Oh yeah, NY and Yorkshire are nice exceptions. I forget about them because they are less frequently raced (at least it feels like it) than Makrui or Watopia.
The perimeter loop is 68 ft / mile, so hillier than Watopia or Makuri, but still not really hilly.
Everything bagel is hilly, but I’d say rarely raced: 81 ft / mile
As is Yorkshire (which makes sense, because its a real world route) is actually hilly: 93 ft / mile but in terms of race courses, it’s clearly the exception.
Our town’s gravel race, which is through rolling farmland hills is 105 ft / mile. It has no mountains or anything, its just that you are constantly climbing or descending (which is what I would take as a requirement for a route to be considered hilly as opposed to a flat route that has a hill or two).
And James, I should point out, I’m not complaining about the hillyness/flatness of the routes that are available. I’m just saying outdoor-indoor speed comparisons need to be carefully done, because essentially Watopia and Makuri are comparable to Florida / Texas / Southern GA, etc. but may not be comparable to everyone’s outdoor riding environment, because they are on the flatter side and lots of people live in hillier places. I don’t think Zwift’s speeds are ridiculously high when you account for the fact that the tarmac is perfect, the rider position is aero, the packs are tight, and the rubber is expensive and not a training all-weather puncture resistant tire, and you never flat (so your tire pressure is optimized for speed not self preservation, like IRL). And you’ve got a skin-suit on. Plus there are no stop signs and you can corner like Tom Pidcock. So the physics seem right and the speeds should appear high compared to lots of outdoor rides.
I thoroughly enjoyed racing RGV this week, despite it being flat (and the new pack dynamics seemed to make it more fun). And I loved the addition of the cobbles. I would advocate that be a permanent change.
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My experience on cobble crusher yesterday- don’t try to break away or even get close to the front unless you have a lot of banked power, the red number hits and destroys you so you fall to the back. Don’t fall off the back unless you have a lot of banked power. Just sitting in the middle isn’t necessarily as mindless as it was, I had to constantly apply more power to stay in the group which means there wasn’t much banked power. I understand it’s a race and there shouldn’t be a free ride but pack recovery seems nearly non existent now.
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I don’t agree at all…. It was easy for me to sit mid pack or at the back, it is getting back to the front which is more difficult. Just as irl, you need to know the course and start getting to the front before the difficulties.
You know the pack will change on the cobbles, sprint segment, the intestine segment etc. So you have to get to the front before!
Me too!
Please make that permanent !
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What Zwift game version are you on Gregory? Your description almost sounds like you are using a previous version where braking was much more aggressive? 
Flint, i have been told DoubleDraft is standard with PD4. Is this true ? If so, is it for events only or all the time ?
It’s 1.5x draft for everything now.
Double draft no longer exists.
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I did my first group ride / race with PD4 and didn’t really notice anything different from pd3. That’s probably a good thing that nothing felt wrong.
This is interesting 
Had my first go with PD4 yesterday on the ToW Big Loop long route. Overall impressions are that I did notice less churning from front to back for the short duration I was able to hold onto the front group, and even in smaller groups there was less of this going on. I also noticed that because of this, I wasn’t getting pushed from side to side as often as what PD3 forced me to do, which was nice overall and kept sharper turns less surgey than previously if I had to take an outside line. The autobraking/red numbers, however, did create a few surges of effort to stay in the group and not fall off the back, but nothing too difficult or serious.
Can’t comment yet on breakaways or bigger blobs as I haven’t tried them yet, but looking forward to both scenarios.
I did a Cobble Crusher race this morning and had no issues. When the pack is just cruising along on the flats, I love how stable the pack looks with regards to riders moving forward and back within the group. I had no trouble just sitting in the group, even at the back didn’t seem any different. Also had no trouble rolling toward the front by raising power if I needed to. PD4 is a big win for me.
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@DavidP I have an example of what people seem to be describing (sort of). I don’t get a red number but I do suddenly drop in speed and fall quickly to the back of the group. I half suspect it’s more that I backed off slightly in power while at the same time encountering a slight positive grade but it does seem to show what some people have mentioned about being shot to the back suddenly. 12:28 in the video if it doesn’t link directly to it.
I don’t see that at all. I see your power dropping while everyone else’s is increasing. Use stop action every second or two to compare your power to the others. After you are out the back you increase your power and catch back on. Looks right to me.
Yeah, I’m not saying it’s wrong. Just that it describes what some people are saying is happening to them and blaming PD4.
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As to PD4 versus PD3, it is a major improvement in my experience riding mostly with Robo’s. Much easier to modulate your power to move within the group without overshooting forward or backward.
I have seen this complaint on Reddit too.
It could be that people say that this is wrong because it is unexpected behavior compared to IRL. They expect the draft to be stronger and find that they are spat out the back way too swiftly. If it is the same in PD3 has no relevance now when we only have PD4. All feedback applies to the current PD now.
This is quite correct - big packs IRL go really fast.
Riding in the rain past Innsbruck airport on the flat road and doing 45km/h. Front was going even faster.
With the coco group on volcano circuit I was even able to ride back to them after a quick stop to get rid of a towel that was on the rocker plate (off balance). With PD3 that would never happen.
Based on my ride today, I was thinking along similar lines—some combination of backing off power to avoid going to the front, but not soon enough to avoid braking, at the same time the group is increasing power. It is easy enough to correct with a few hard pedal strokes, and an incentive to improve “bike handling skills.”