im thinking of join up, me and some friends have a question though, how does the “racing” ie going for KOMs or say you have two riders in the real world of similar power and then in game, one is on a dumb trainer with no power meter just cadence and speed and the other has a smart trainer. How will there Racing be affected ? will it be accurate and equal ? Surely the person on the dumb trainer and just crank down the resistance to win everything ? ie cheating ? or are dumb trainers which don’t have power excluded from leader boards ?
I can see a time when race are separate with pm and smart trainer users on their own. If dumb trainers are set up correctly then there isn’t a problem but any day you are on the island most of the top times on the jersey sections are taken by Zpower users. There have been a few races where some riders have had pretty improbable power output for the 5 or 6 lap races. Most will claim it is genuine but if you check their Strava outdoor rides they are often 4-5mph slower for similar h/r. Zwift is pretty close to outdoor road bike rides so if Zpower Zwift rides are more than 1-2mph different then the calibration is off a bit.
Not ideal but most people end up not trying to race against someone on Zpower and try and get their own pb’s.
It really is well worth joining as it is so addictive and can give a real boost to fitness.
oh right, i could see the point of just racing your own times, i have a tacx genius so unfortunately im not entirely sure on how to rig it up to zwift and friends have basic dumb trainers. i would guess i would have to set mine up on the software in the back ground on a steady power for how ever long, minimize then run zwift and connect zwift to the cadence and speed sensors on my bike from my garmin. Im assuming zwift uses some sort of calculation of cadence and speed of the wheel to work out estimated power ? then that’s what is compared with those actually transmitting power ?
i will give it ago, my friends want next to zero investment in cash if they are getting into this, ones got a broken collarbone hence him pointing this out to me as hes considering it for rehab.
i could sell up the genius and get the smart bushido with the money but i dont know whether i should keep the tacx software if i do! then try and use it with the bushido smart. That said ive heard euro bike is in august and typically this is where new trainer products are announced… so i find my self in trainer limbo land.
I think the Tacx Vortex with the firmware upgrade is about the cheapest ‘smart’ trainer out there at under £300 but it is still a fair amount of cash to start out with. I already had a Computrainer and it works great with Zwift as does the Kickr. There are a good few I have read saying they got into Zwift due to injury keeping them from outdoor riding.
It really is great and I have done just under 3000 miles from late January on Zwift. I could never have done that number of miles without Zwift to keep me interested.
Even training rides are more fun if you hook up with some other rider.