Pack Dynamics update [July 2021] [1.15.0]

From the release notes however:
Made improvements to the Draft Lock logic which should minimize the likelihood that a rider will lose speed when colliding with riders

@Dean
That means this:

I raced the Zwift Classics today and felt like I had less incidents of being thrown out of the draft. It felt smoother and an improvement overall. I was mostly riding in a group of 9-10 riders. I can’t comment on the effect in bigger groups. Keep on tuning! :slight_smile:

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I did a ride with coco this morning and the draft felt really good.

I was also there and the results are better.

The C group stayed together well with the exception of a few people who took off to get a quick time. But the rest of the group was smooth enough.

The afternoon group I ride with does between 3w/kg to 4w/kg and the drafting behaviour was smooth for us.

10 posts were split to a new topic: [Avatars weaving after July 2021 release 1.15.0

Hey gang - I’ve split off the reports of avatars weaving into a new thread. Please join us on that thread if you’re experiencing this problem, thanks!

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Hey Shooj,

I run an event every Tuesday at 6.30PM AEST (Team Zwift Tri Oz - Challenge Ride) where we “Group Time Trial” our way across the Fugit Tempus / Feugo Flats Return Segment trying to beat our previous best.

This week after the latest updates we managed to better our time. We did notice a definite difference this week with a group of around 100 riders starting out and slowly reducing to 16 of us at the end of the 7.1k segment. The draft dynamics are extremely noticeable and we could really feel the difference when you last made a change (in the last update) as our pace dropped slightly (3-4%) across the segment.

We have set an 8.30min target for our next weeks attempt. We managed 8.32min this week and look forward to going under the 8.30 mark next week.

I just thought I’d let you know that the dynamics (Algorithm) are working.

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@i_Kapture when you got down to 16 people, how did you find the draft significance. I. E. Was it easier to sit on, and was everyone kinda in a line?

@Aaron_Bleakley4665

We are about 3-4 wide and seem to shuffle as we “Echelon” (rotate). There’s never really a time that one rider sits out front for an extended period. Whoever is leading needs to sit on 5w/kg while leading the group.

It did seem slightly more accurate since the latest update.

Example: We ran an 8.37 before the previous update. Once that previous update came in we could only manage 8.40’s but with the last and most recent update (this week) we were able to sit on 50kph average dropping us back into the low 8.30’s.

The last (Previous) update felt like we were riding on gravel and now it feels ike we’re back on asphalt.

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Cool thanks.
Looks like Makuri Island will be a cluster anyway for the TTT this week.
I fan watched for 20mins on Flatland route and there are riders all over the place :cry:Watopia and Paris were perfect in comparison

This is a very disappointing development especially considering 300-400 teams are going to try to do a 50-70min Team Time Trial on Flatland course over the next 20hrs

The last draft dynamic update (April?) made life tough, this one is awesome in the worlds that it works. But it is basically going to be an 8 person iTT in Makuri Island

Oh yeah.
Gaming PC/WINDOWS 10

1 Like

Bonjour, depuis la mise à jour,ma tablette Dragon Touche K10,refuse de fonctionner, avec l’ancienne version aucuns soucis.L’application se télécharge mais ne se lance pas.

7 posts were merged into an existing topic: Avatars weaving after July 2021 release [1.15.0]

We were racing in WTRL TTT tonight, and it was pure madness. Multiple teams had all the big guys dropped (DNF), as it felt impossible to find any recovery in the pack.

As speculated in the previous post, with latest zwift update big riders seem to be further penalized. After the TTT race, and seeing the results from 100+ riders from our club on the WTRL TTT page, there is not much doubt left.

I upvote to rollback that specific update; and while any work on draft improvement is appreciated, it should be tested in a controlled group beforehand e.g. specially announced group rides/ races.

5 Likes

Let’s roll it back to before the update that brought with it the Gravel bikes and the new algorithm for the Jungle loop. I’m thinking it was April?

Things were more predictable for everyone back then…all we seem to be doing now is chasing our tails with these monthly updates. It’s fun when it all works well but the moment it doesn’t the system fails to deliver a great experience.

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Some clubs stopped organizing group rides in worlds where you ride on the left side (Makuri, London, Yorkshire), as these worlds seem to be more impacted. So Paris and Watopia should be fine.

Group rides in Watopia show subjectively less erratic riders; however, the new draft dynamics is still fully on. While avg power is in similar range to the one before the update, RPE effort is considerably higher as power curve in not smooth & flat, but spiky of constantly hitting the sticky draft wall / losing speed in ‘road pot holes’ where you need to power up again to maintain pace and avoid being dropped.

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Here to report that drafting is nearly impossible in small groups. I was in a group of 3 riders in a race today and we could not draft each other consistently due to erratic lateral movement for no obvious reason. It almost looked like 2 riders were not allowed to be in the draft of the rider in the front. For instance, if i am the 2nd rider drafting the 1st rider, and the 3rd rider comes a little too close to us, game would remove both of us from the draft of the 1st rider by pushing us to the side. It is dizzying to watch and tiring to ride with.

Avoiding the troublesome worlds causing the the wild lateral weaving is probably key to getting a feel for the new dynamcs. Outside of those worlds, the Dynamics change is reasonably obvious (for the better) to me.

Yeah, my race was in London. So, are Watopia, France, and New York fine?