Well this is Wahoo’s definition:
KICKR BIKE smart bike trainer is compatible with KICKR Trainer Accessories, including the KICKR DESK and KICKR HEADWIND Smart Fan, allowing you to build the ideal setup to make your smart bike experience next level immersive.
But in the end it doesnt matter what its called.
5wkg+ and you can roll away on Tempus. It isn’t easy but bike racing breakaways aren’t easy in real life either.
I just wish the right/left failure to seek draft correctly while auto-steering would be fixed. Still seems strange to me that riders behind you can corrupt the avatar’s choice and kick it off to the side out of draft in a persistent way. No IRL racer would ever do that.
Breakaways purely depend on the type of race.
Breakaways on normal Zwift races aren’t meant to happen, and can’t, assuming categorization has done its job. They’re simply… too short.
Get into a series or 1+ hour races, and if someone is strong enough and the category wide enough, breakways can, and do happen. I’ve seen it happen enough times on FRR to know it absolutely can happen.
That said, I personally haven’t seen any adjustment, no matter how small, come to PD since February.
I struggle to believe it’s been tampered with at all, in the public realm; despite the commentary that it’s “always being worked on.”
Are those races with PD5?
Last we knew was that racing was on some sort of other pace dynamics and that regular rides had some type of PD5.x.x version - which we don’t know what has changed, only that things appear to be changed - noticed by some people.
You can see if it’s enabled for races in Log.txt
[AutoSteering] V5 Races N Events Y W N J N All Y | 150.00 1.10 30.00 5.00 10.00 200.00, 600.00 20.00 2.00 10.00 15.00 0.50, 0.02 70.00 25.00 0.45 0.50 6250000.00, 15.00 15.00 150.00 10.00 10.00 30.00, 10.00 1.50 1.20 100.00 0.01 0.80, 0.50 0.00 0.45
W = Watopia
J = Makuri Islands (Japan)
Do you know what that numbers mean?
I don’t know. Probably configuration parameters. Some values match the received from server posted above, but even with the names of the variables, I don’t know what they mean. The others are likely default hardcoded values.
When it’s Watopia No Japan No All Yes which takes precedence?
By observation I would say “All” has precedence (if All is Y, W and J can be N and it will be enabled anyway). I noticed “V5” behavior in both Watopia and France recently (player affected by what I suppose to be adjusted through “backRepulsionPercent”, which gives “draft benefit” for having another player behind and also makes the player “get out of the way” if another player arrives too fast).
It feels like these issues that are complained about are more obvious when the groups are very large.
I did 75km with the Jacques group today - all fine with the small group of 9-10 people. But when it got to about 30 or so the issues that have been complained about were more obvious.
I ride a Kickr Bike V2 with steering enabled. If I had to compare it to something it would be like riding on a strip of grease up the road. You keep slipping off it. You spend your entire time adjusting the steering to maintain a position on the road and fighting a never-ending battle to achieve that. Regularly you are pushed to the side of the road by someone without steering and held there. When you either slow down or speed up and steer back into the peloton they immediately follow you back in. You are constantly jostled from side to side and able to spend only moments in the centre of the peloton normally. The only way I have been able to combat this is to ride just behind the pack, if it is compact. But, once the peloton passes through a couple of corners it inevitable becomes strung out with the inside line travelling faster through the corner than the outside. If there are two corners in the same direction in close proximity to one another then this effect is multiplied creating even further disbanding of the peloton. You need to be fully aware of the route and the upcoming corners so you can position yourself laterally in the best position to reduce your chances of being on the outside of a corner. I’ve found that being on the inside third of the corner seems to work best but good luck holding that position if there are people beside you as you will be shuffled around against your will.
I have noticed also when riding in groups of 10 or less and there happens to be a rider without steering in front or behind you off to one side of the road your avatar will seek their draft, even though the draft would logically be better behind the main bulk of riders. If you steer back toward the main bulk of the peloton you immediately move to seek the wide rider’s draft again once you let go of the steering button.
One trick I have been able to make work when trying to re-enter a large peloton from the side it to repeatedly press the steering button while pressed up against the edge of the peloton. This eventually causes me to ‘jump’ violently back into the centre of the peloton (or thereabouts).
The draft effect seems better in the front third of the peloton than it does in the middle or rear third. It is the best directly at the rear but falls off extremely quickly. So much so that it is unbelievably easy to fall out of the draft.
I rode on RGV with Coco about 2 months ago and it appeared that PD5 was not in effect on that route at that time - it was glorious.
This whole thing of not being able to pass through other avatars, even slowly has made navigating the ‘virtual’ peloton quite a chore. In a time when we can make computers do anything we like, why not make this game easy to use? I totally get it for racing. Make it as real as you like but for people who want to rack up a few hours on their trainer to gain a bit of fitness why make it difficult to use, or make people have to ‘re-learn’ the game every few months?
Would you say this is or isn’t realistic to IRL road races?
Road races don’t have computer programming pushing you off your line. Road races do have collisions which limit the push and shove, unless folks want to lose skin or get injured.
Would you say that for realism, races in Zwift need collisions in order to reflect real life?
I would say it’s very unrealistic as my attempts to maintain a position laterally on the road come as a result of being shoved violently left to right and so on - usually by 3-4 rider widths in either direction. If this were to occur in real life it would be total carnage.
Imagine the queue to get into the velodrome everyone keeps asking for, if all zwift avatars required physical space 
Just did a new ride for our group this morning, it seems the pack splits seem to occur in the 15-20 range, where you get people shooting off to the side for no reason and out of the draft of the blob.
PD5 seems to be most happy / functional in the <15 rider count.
Granted, this has been the case since it’s unofficial release.