Over a number of months, we have been testing, privately and publicly and making iterations to our 5th version of Pack Dynamics. This is presently live on all free ride, group ride and RoboPacer activities.
Pack Dynamics V5 (PD5) has two goals. Firstly to improve collision avoidance - so you do not ride through other riders. Secondly it improves how quickly you are able to find the draft after having been overtaken - great news if you ride in TTTs!
Most recently, a number of our event organisers have been helping us test this new feature in races and weâve also run a week of the Zwift Crit Racing events using PD5. We have received no negative feedback as a result.
We will be turning on PD5 for races (and thus all Zwift activities) tomorrow (July 24) around 1300 UTC. This will give racers a chance to use it in the Thursday Team Time Trials, as well as having a full month of ZRacing to get used to the new dynamics before our peak racing season begins with the launch of Zwift Racing League in September.
As always, if you ever have any feedback after having tried using PD5 in races, weâd be delighted to hear it.
It was a silent test only on the first week of the July Crit events. We also had less silent tests with a number of Community organisers running PD5 in their events (including WTRL).
It wasnât intended as a big secret, but I did want to run PD5 on some races without announcing it to see if there was any negative or positive feedback as people would generally contact me to let me know if something felt wrong.
Because itâs for sure become worse in group rides, where some of us still are singularly getting pushed out of the blob solo to the extreme edge of the road away from the blob and falling out the back until it decides weâre indeed doing enough power to be part of the blob; the blob we were part of until it decided to steer us away from.
Collision is still definitely above all on the Handcycle; so that wasnât fixed either.
Itâs still frankly easy to notice a few changes here and there, but there is absolutely something still wrong with draft seeking when the game decides to spit us out.
In what situation is it normal that I was leading that pack, and then randomly got ejected so far out the side that Iâm dropped from it.
This situation is still happening since the release of PD5, and is itâs BIGGEST issue to date, still. Itâs frankly the ONLY flaw anyone has ever cared about. I still see this happen on a daily occurrence to myself, and others.
If anyoneâs ever seen anyone comment poorly about PD5, itâs in reference to this; the same bug thatâs forever plagued it. I can certainly take more pictures of it happening, because itâs that often.
Thanks for the announcement! It would be really awesome if a summary could be posted about the feedback that led to any changes, feedback that was thought to be useful but no changes made yet, and feedback that was discarded as not useful or impractical. I donât want to repeat the stuff I already said since itâs been hashed over so much already, I donât wish to be any more tiresome than I already am.
Iâll admit that for the most part things feel good in small groups; or groups so wide you canât go anywhere anyways. Brake checking etc. is much better than PD4 was. Not perfect, but.. definitely has improved over time.
But something is still causing folks to get thrown out the side randomly despite steady power, whatever that is, needs to be hunted down.
And just a repeat of what Chris said, if that can be a feature of maybe PD6, weâd be in a good spot IMO. The only reason why PD5 âsucksâ over PD4 is because of this ejection out the pack (in my experience). Which seems to happen primarily during steady states. I donât think I ever notice it too much during races, but I havenât been doing many races this year, so I donât have much of a voice there.
If PD5+ (6 if it has to be), can make it so folks making passes go around, would be great. Itâs always super ugly in appearance when someone at a higher pace just bee-lines it through the middle of the road and the rest of us go around them like water over a stone.
A note on pack ejections:
it seems like the draft seeking almost ignores the pack, which I think is where the frustration lies; because we see a whole bunch next to us, our rider fell out the draft, and just⌠sits there for 10+ seconds at times until either we fall to the very rear and the draft âconeâ is âfound,â despite it existing alongside us all along.
As of the recent changes, it is apparent [to me] changes were made because of the pace our riders steers back into the pack when it discovers it. But it still seems the draft detection isnât wide enough.
Is PD5 getting better? Yes. But itâs not there still.
The wide road and pack splitting issues need resolve as does the pack ejections.
Those to me are the biggest issues PD5 has left over.
The biggest issue I have is in a strung-out pack it only takes one person to ease off and let the wheel go and everyone behind gets braked and the pack splits. Sometimes you can be sitting behind someone doing 5w/kg when they are doing 3.5w/kg and you just sit on their wheel.
I experience this a lot too, itâs another side of the âbullyingâ introduced in PD5. I find with robopacer rides, itâs easier to keep with the group if you stay ahead of the bot - if you ride behind it, youâre more susceptible to riders peeling off the pack and taking you with them as the bot speeds on. Your options are to surge your power and hope you push by the anchor, move to the side and have to surge your power anyway because you lost the draft, or hope they catch back up lol. I ride by myself a lot more now because Iâm tired of having to teleport back to big robopacer groups when I just want a steady ride.
The sideways bullying has improved (although I still encounter it every ride), backwards bullying has seen no improvements since PD5 was introduced.
This got better (less jerky pinball machine effect) but being pushed out of the way by an overtaking rider is still really weird and undesirable. Thatâs my #1 hope for improvement.
Now that PD5 will be in effect in all the contexts that matter to me, that will clarify that any PD issues are with the latest version and not the previous one, which I think will be a helpful development for people giving feedback.
Main things I have seen from Robo pacers ride, when moving forward in a pack your rider will seek draft and the middle of the road.. if you stop moving forward you will move back towards the outside of the group as forward progressing riders pass you and move you outwards.
In reality with steering, you can settle and steer into the middle of the road & draft.
For racing, itâs going to cause some riders stress as they get moved out and backwards when they stop applying enough power to move them forward.. Itâs going to create churn until riders settle with the dynamic.
I have seen this a lot, multiple times yesterday with the Constance robopacer group. I could split the group myself by easing off a bit, folks behind could not get past and the folks ahead zoomed away.
Also on the flip side I was stuck behind a couple of folks on coffee stops and had to do 5.0w/kg or more to get past the blocking. Then when you do get past them, the coffee stop riders go forward again at high speed. So you just back off and wait until the coffee stops are finished and teleport back to the robopacer. Or if someone is fed up by that they stop pedalling and the coffee stop riders stop as well.
And the steering bullying is now the reverse where non steering riders automatically push steering riders to the edges of the road your only option is to surge ahead or slow down and get away from them. But if you surge ahead, your steering is very slow - its difficult to steer back towards the rest of the pack.
These are not new things, they were reported in the huge topic PD5 but never got replies or acknowledgement.
Until a non steering rider comes along to overtake and pushes you out of the way again (see screenshots before).
Just did 3 hours with Constance on Sugar cookie with a reasonably good sized group and without a doubt the PD are waaaaaaay better since the update.
Didnât once have to steer back into the group due to getting pushed out.
Rider avoidance is definitely better also
At one point we caught and passed a maria group and all of us in Constance went completely around the Maria group - didnât go through them at all.
I never seen that before
Nice one @James_Zwift and team
