We’ve changed how we do route estimates on the home screen, effective today on Zwift version 1.80 and above. Historically, the route time estimates have been a generalized “<30 min”, “<60 min”, “<90 min”, or “90+ min”. We are now using an algorithm that uses the route data plus the user’s FTP and weight to estimate the time. In other words, it’s now personalized!
Q: What if my FTP or weight isn’t correct?
A: Your time estimates will be incorrect if your FTP or weight aren’t accurate. See the above links for more information.
Q: Why do I still see the old estimates in the Companion app?
A: The Companion app’s route time estimates are not yet updated to this new approach.
Sounds interesting, but what are you calling FTP and what should we change our profile to in order to get a decent route time estimate?
Actual recent power for 60mins?
95% of our recent 20mins, which most can hold for approx 35-55mins?
“The Grade” guestimate?
My last reliable stats where I’m not suspicious of my power data comes from November, 216W for 20mins and 162W for 60mins.
Should we change our profile FTP setting to our anticipated pace, perhaps or maybe even certainly below our threshold and then look at route time estimates?
It seems pretty sensible.
It’s telling me that makuri 40 will take 1hr 15min. Just did it in TDZ in just over an hour in a group sitting mainly in zone 2/3.
Road to Sky has the same predicted time, which is about right for that including the lead in.
On companion those are <90 minutes and 90+ minutes respectively.
“I checked route estimates for a 75kg rider at various in-game FTP settings. …….
Without spending hours digging deep into the new route estimation algorithm, it would appear Zwift is estimating route completion times based on riders holding around 75% of FTP for the duration of the ride.
(It’s entirely possible that Zwift’s algorithm is much more complex than this, though. Since the estimates are rounded, it’s hard to pin down exactly what’s happening behind the scenes.)”
Looks like Zwift is also doing its rounding thing to the nearest 5 minutes, because we can’t handle single digits (reference to workout wattage targets).
No point me asking if you are new here because I know you are not.
You have been around long enough to know that Zwift likes to keep calculations close to its chest and I don’t expect you tagging all their staff is going to change their mind.
For me the personalized route estimates look WAAY better than what was there before, so I’m a fan!
Ideally you could see or pivot the estimates for a couple of your zones (recovery, zone 2, sweet spot, threshold etc.) but what they have implemented works fine for me.
Could be but they also round to the nearest thirty minutes on those so maybe the 4hr ride is actually calculated at 3:31 and then rounded to 4:00 but a 3:29 would’ve been rounded to 3:30.
You would hope so but Zwift sometimes does things differently. Regardless, this is a great improvement and I’m glad I don’t have to reference another website for real estimates anymore.
For future improvements, I’d love to be able to see the time estimates in the companion app, especially because the current implementation (as far as I can tell) only allows you to see routes/worlds that are active on the calendar, but if you’re selecting a route in any world for a workout, there’s nowhere to see the estimates yet. Unless there’s a way to do this that I’m missing.
