One question I have; in the previous iteration I believe there was a rule that autobraking would never be applied on an incline above 1-2%. Is that rule still present, or is the draft% tied to gradient?
No, that was I believe some wrong information. There is no explicit rule that disables auto-braking on inclines. However it is almost impossible to have an amount of draft savings percentage on inclines above 2% that reach the necessary threshold.
I jumped in the pen as I was a bit busy and watched for a while on the Rhino PD4 Group ride test. It looks nearly as bad as last time we tested it with PACK with slowdown events losing 3kph or zooming forward at a lower power. Watched one rider on a downslope slow down while increasing power. Will be interesting to watch the stream (if available) to see when Gordon lost lots of speed if the power digits were Red.
Can you do something more central to the screen? With an ultrawide screen close to my face I rarely even see the power field in the upper left. Where the “close the gap” visual comes in would be ideal. Or move the power numbers to the center data section so it’s consistent with workout mode.
So… I thought the test events weren’t beginning until Friday? It’s Wednesday where I am…
Time zones, man.
The red digits were so brief hardly time to react and do anything about them.
As for zooming through the pack i did wonder a couple times did seem a fraction easy to get through the pack and was in general more strung out than a usual group ride.
Possibly example good comparison with e E.Pizza power Rhino Sausage Roll Social with new Pack Dynamics - YouTube or here Rhino Sausage Roll Social with new Pack Dynamics - YouTube
On the plus side those going for breakaway suggesting that them holding similar power to the group was enough to stay away.
I’m not convinced it’s better for group rides but will be interesting to see what it is like in a race Friday.
note i was near the back most the time as riding very near the top of advertised pace so didn’t want to push harder
6am Friday is showing for first PD4 test, here in Eastern US. Where is it Friday in the world when it’s 5pm on Wednesday?
You just gotta go farther around the world. More than one time, most likely.
It’s always 5pm Friday somewhere 
My guess is Rino racing asked James to help set up a PD4 group ride.
Edit: Or maybe invented time travel?
A few timestamps showing the problems, seems as bad as last time.
Those last 3 are pretty bad. Getting auto-braked when there’s no one around you seems a bit silly.
There are only 5 people in the C cat race Friday morning… going to be pretty pointless if no one else signs up.
C across the board is light. That 5am race (I happen to be central time, so…nope!) has 6 right now, the 1pm has 9 (currently I’m signed up, but I’m still not sure if I’ll be able to do the whole thing), and the 5pm has 4.
I feel like 9 is around a threshold of making it worthwhile, maybe. But once I get dropped on the climbs, that’ll be down to 8 anyway
Edit: D cat is worse. 1 person in one of them. But hey, 5pm is up to 10 now.
Hopefully there are a lot of people like myself who basically never sign up for one-off races until the day of the race (often minutes before it starts).
I did sign up to this one in advance but that’s rare for me.
Autobraking when you are off the back trying to get back on. Ouch. At least you see it in now with the red power number. Some work needs to be done.
I wonder whick of this rules applied to auto-braking in the last 3 videos?
Rules for the auto-braking
Auto-braking will be applied if:
So to put it in simple terms, if the system detects you are “relaxing” your power but your speed is above the rider in front in HIGH draft situations, it slows you down.
Don’t know whether that was the same problem/issue during the last series of PD4 test events, but I found it no fun at all. I’m going to wait this one out and see what the feedback is (don’t normally ride on Fridays anyway).
If they are implementing auto-braking to affect/control the dynamics and churning maybe it should be kicking-in somewhere around mid-pack, not the tail-end?
This is a group ride - separate to the race tests on Friday.
Being a social ride and already riding at near the maximum pace i was purposely going easy at times and allowing the fence to control the pack back to me rather than chasing.
in the old days of really sticky draft if it had red power like today it would turn on for a long time. We still have a sticky draft of sorts just a lot less. is it wrong to be autobreaking me a fraction even just following a single rider?
Reviewing the 2nd last video over the esses i backed off quite a bit after the initial push so probably right that it distances me from the group rather than just suck me along in the blob.
At a guess i’d say the 10 second averaging that is going on is possibly too extreme both on going faster and slower which is why we see riders zooming through a blob at relatively low pace. (b.Hebb last clip too much too little??? after he goes easy after and effort still drifting through the pack)
Reviewing the footage is far more informative than the ride at the time if didn’t feel bad and there was not massive complaints from riders so would be interesting to see how it performs in a race environment.