I wonder if we should split this thread to form a general “comments & observations” one and leave this simply to advertise forthcoming test events (otherwise they are likely to get buried/missed very quickly amongst the enthusiastic discourse 
).
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Clearly not, or I wouldn’t be reading your negativistic comments on Christmas Day…
They’ve decided that braking is their solution
We haven’t decided anything yet. If this was easy it would have been done already.
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This is the ultimate answer - collision detection. But is it really right to have that without steering?
Merry Christmas David, this level of community engagement is actually one of the best I’ve seen on the platform, so thank you for that. Also there is very clearly not an easy answer unlike other topics that have been discussed.
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This is definitely the case. You can test it by riding with as little as one other user and using something like Discord to chat in real time, comparing notes on who is ahead at any given point.
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I think so yes. If there’s no room there is no room regardless of steering. I’d have thought that blocking through sheer weight of numbers would be quite realistic and could introduce a bit of tactical interest into races. People would still get strung out on any climbs.
However it’s quite a radical change.
My main concern would be when the groups are huge and the lanes narrow, and starting position determines where you end up…
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How about this (please be kind, it’s Christmas):
The road is split into 3 “lanes”, a large central lane and two single-rider width lanes on either side. Front and back collision detection is active in the central lane, but riders can move left and right through each other. Collision detection is off completely in the left and right lanes.
The game tries to position everyone in the large central lane as it does today. If a rider is doing power that should accelerate them then they will only move forward in the group if there is space ahead, otherwise collision detection stops them and they are moved left instead so long as they keep up the required power. If they keep pushing on then they end up in the left hand lane which allows them to move forward until they are at the front and they get moved back to the centre. They lose the draft benefit once they are alongside the 2nd row from the front, or earlier if the overtaking lane is quite empty, more like real life. The opposite happens for riders who reduce power below that required for their current speed relative to the group, if there isn’t space directly behind they move right into the slowing lane where they can move backwards. So long as there are other slowing riders then they will all get the draft apart from the front of the slow lane.
Riders can control their power if they see themselves moving into the fast and slow lanes to manage their position in the group. Steering by power perhaps.
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I still think just reversing the logic of accelerating rider takes central line to accelerating ride takes outside or inside line is worth a test.
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Thanks for engaging the community to the degree you have/are. Merry Christmas.
Agree there’s definitely a risk that could happen in some cases, but most race packs aren’t really huge and when they are, missing the break because you’re stuck at the back of the pack would be a bit of realism 
I think it would most likely add a bit of tactical interest to races that are currently mostly rather predictable power tests.
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PD 4 is real product improvement and takes time.
CE was real product improvement and took time.
Pen enforcement, wt changes, unifying race cat system and public posting of race results are not so ground breaking.
Keep up the good work and Merry Christmas.
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Race packs might not be that large but won’t the same Pack Dynamics be used in all events, RP rides etc?
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Think so, and prevents a simple moving the start of the draft effect further back behind the leading rider to cause the deceleration of the overtaking rider to start sooner, as that would cause problems for team time trials.
Just a quick update from my part on progress and ideas shared here.
I began testing with the idea of applying auto-brakes when the rider is coming out of a high draft situation into low draft. So far it seems promising.
For it to work I’m applying roughly these rules to engage auto-braking:
- aero drag (in watts) drops from 80-90w to 20-10w
- speed is higher than rider in front that you are overtaking
- distance to rider in front is less than half a bike length
- your power drops below 5% of your last 3 sec. power (we need to use a more reactive and “aggressive rule” for it to work in this case)
So basically the whole idea (for the ones who haven’t read this entire thread), is to apply auto-braking only around the hypothetical front of a group instead of anywhere, and therefore slowing the front of the pack.
The goal would be to use this new approach as the main source of slowing the packs down and keep what we have currently (in a way that can be toggled on/off) if we want to make things more “interesting” in terms of creating harder racing
(this new approach will only be available after 1.33 release if all goes well)
On another topic, the one related with collision detection and overtaking on the outside. I had a meeting last week with my colleague that worked on the PDv3 and discussed the ideas that were proposed here. We reached the conclusion that at the moment is not the best solution to what we want to achieve here.
Currently the overtaking inside the peloton is “random”. The rider chooses the path of least resistance that provides less lateral movement. There is no behaviour to overtake from the inside or outside. Besides that, in larger packs there is still the overtaking inside the pack that will only be exposed to the wind at the front of the peloton.
We might work on it later on to improve the visuals of overtaking preferring the outside but currently it’s not in the scope of this work of Pack Dynamics 4.
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Sounds interesting. Could you explain in a little more detail what the first condition means? I think I understand the logic behind the others.
Autobraking only at the very front of the blob sounds good. The 5% power drop thing too, really in this situation your power should be going way up if you actually want to face the wind.
Have to say that overtaking inside the peloton certainly does not feel “random” to me. For instance, riding in a large pace partner group, modulating my power very carefully to not push any harder than necessary to maintain position, I find that I end up spending about 90% of my time all the way to the left or right in the blob. Seems a rather biased form of randomness to me…
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Does this mean “aero drag savings (in watts)”? If not, I don’t understand the context.
to put it as simply as possible i believe it means that if you do get autobraked, it’s to the tune of 10-20w (probably no more than 10% of anyone’s FTP) rather than 80-90w (which could be as much of approx. 40% of a heavy C rider’s FTP)
with the simple idea being that people on the front are doing slightly more power than people further back and hopefully having the effect of slowing a large pack speed down without penalising anyone too severely
correct me if i’m wrong
edit: or it just means that the conditions for autobraking require you to essentially already be in the wind. that too
Yes it means aero drag savings.
so for instance when you are fully sheltered inside the pack your aero drag savings are 150w (hypothetical number). when you come more to the front and start hitting the wind that value drops from 80-90 to 20-10w (also approximate numbers) means the transition from medium draft to almost no draft.
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