The fact the Tour de Zwift needs to do 3 laps of a short circuit to get a B ride in Scotland demonstrates how valuable a Scotland expansion would be.
Zwift expanded London many years ago, to great benefit. Leith and Keith hills substantially increased the options version the initial release, where the Prudential Challenge needed to do so many laps of Box Hill (because there was no Leith or Keith hills).
Other worlds would additionally benefit from expansion, including Scotland:
Innsbruck: the long lap from World Championships, which added a steeper climb from the Leg Snapper.
Bologna: the full Giro dell’Emilia finishing circuit, allowing for real laps of the San Luca climb
Paris: for the 2024 Olympics, add a circuit across the Seine, passing the Tour Eiffel. The actual Olympic circuit has some nice climbs as well, so this is just a minimum.
France: connect the dirt stubs, and add an extra climb to connect with Ventoux near the train, a longer alternate to the Petit KOM.
Crit City: add an extra loop, maybe adding a longer climb.
Glasgow is in Scotland and Paris is in France. But on Zwift, Paris is not in France.
I think there are good reasons for this - it made sense to build Paris and France separately because they were created in an extremely tight timeline to be ready for the 2020 Virtual Tour de France, and keeping them separate will have reduced risk and sped up the build process.
But now, four years on, I think it makes sense for Paris to move into France on Zwift, in the same way as Glasgow is in Scotland. I think Paris and France would be better for it.
I agree. It’s disappointing to have most of the expansions be so tiny in terms of new roads. My understanding is that the development process for road creation is extremely time consuming, so the solution would have to be found in improving that process.
Scotland is my second favourite map on Zwift after watopia. In fact I only ride these two worlds. I’d love a Scotland expansion but I’m not hopeful it will be coming anytime soon.
Innsbruck is another world with potential for easy expansion with some additional small climbs such as the one going up to Hungerburg.
I think it’s more benefit expanding Watopia however as that is always available- but I still hope for expanding Innsbruck a lot more.
Scotland I don’t ride a lot as all the routes I’ve done. If more roads were added that might change.
Or reference Haute Route Dolomites 2017 stage 1 course and the stage 2 courses. Day 1 was Innsbruck to Innsbruck loop, day 2 was Innsbruck to Sterzing via Timmelsjoch. The actual day 1 course was different to the published course in the guide book due to snow. I remember that day as the coldest I’ve ever been on a bike.
Zero upvotes so far so I guess people don’t want a Scotland expansion :).
I think perhaps the issue is Zwift places a very high standard on road scenery, that a lot of modeling work is needed for each and every kilometer. This need not be the case. It’s okay to have some stretches of road with just terrain. For example, an additional loop in Scotland, perhaps with Crow Road (it’s already a portal climb), would substantially increase route options.
I used to use FulGaz a lot and spent a bunch of my time riding in Scotland. Some of my favorites were the rides way up north where there would be huge rolling hills and not many cars on the road. A lot of them looked like this:
I’m not sure Zwift really want to expand the UCI branded worlds for, say the next 3 years at least.
With these branded worlds, who knows what contractual limitations are in place ?
On top of that we’re only getting 2 new road/ world drops a year and the new roads have all been in Makuri or Watopia, I’d love to see New York get some routes out of the park (i’ve seen too many fix gear NYC vids )
They’ve expanded London a couple (?) of times, maybe it needs some more fresh tarmac/ pavement adding too ?
I was thinking this the other day. Given that the Ride London 100 event now goes out through Essex rather than Surrey there’s potential for them to add some of the more notable sections of the new course.
I think the contractual limitations only apply to exact course reproductions, and they’ve clearly given up on those since Yorkshire 2019 after Innsbruck 2018 and Richmond 2015 (they skipped Dubai and Norway). Bologna is from the 2019 Giro. For the 2020 Tour, the 2021 Olympics and the 2023 World Championships, they created fictional worlds inspired by France, Tokyo, and Glasgow/Inverness.
The short loop of the 2021 Worlds in Leuven, Belgium were created unofficially on RGT, and the city loop of the 2022 Wollongong course was created on MyWhoosh. 2020 was originally scheduled for Switzerland but was canceled due to COVID19 and was hastily rescheduled for Imola, Italy in the fall.
I miss the real world routes but they’re probably smart allowing for more creative scope by creating their own hybrid maps.
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