Did you demand they send you the contents too? 
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My steering and braking shuts off when I enter a race. There is literally no advantage.
Haha, it didnât finish my sentence,⌠open box sterzo elite smart
i have received a lot of unsolicited DMs in my time on zwift but one iâm always happy to see is âbreakaway @ whatever km?â. for all the talking about how pack dynamics etc makes zwift races so predictable, a little elbow grease goes a long way. if the break doesnt stick, you met someone new anyway
edit: no opinion on steering other than to say itâs fine. i donât use it, and it doesnât make or break anything. i know of some ZGP guys who, i dont know if they use it during ZGP races or if itâs turned on in those at all to begin with, but they definitely donât use it when they arenât doing them
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Who said Zwift had to make steering or any aspect of racing fair? It isnât fair and it was designed so it wasnât fair to make sales,
What is fair about someone will win 90% of the races if they are 3.3 w/kg in CE, but at 3.4 w/kg you will get dropped?
The designer of CE didnât care about fair. If something was fair, riders across ALL power level should have equal opportunity to win over time, not because of some random arbitrary line.
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And steering can account for 15 watts saving at 250 watts on a crit course. That is a huge amount of watts saving.
But this has to be paired with Sauce, because that gives you the draft number to see the upper limit of cutting corners while still in draft,
While youâre not wrong here, there is a difference between acceptable unfairness and unacceptable unfairness.
To be clear, with the Sterzo being widely available, I donât think steering is a unacceptable unfairness. If someone wonât buy a Sterzo because they want the Play, but they canât get the play, and then they claim that itâs unfair that others can steer when they canât, thatâs on them if they could still buy the Sterzo.
But if steering isnât available to some because of shipping choicesâif the Play was the only game in town, and only for N. America, that would be unacceptable unfairness.
That said, all sport has acceptable unfairness. To change your statement, if IRL racing was really fair, then ALL riders would have equal opportunity to win over time. But thatâs clearly not the case. Same for any sportâeveryone knows, and accepts, that not every athlete has the same chances of winning anything, not by a long shot. Much of that is genetic, much of it is opportunity, resources. But no sport is âfairâ in the way that youâve defined, so I donât see the point of using a definition of âfairnessâ that is literally unattainable, both IRL and in Zwift. No system could make it true that âriders across ALL power level should have equal opportunity to win over timeâ.
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What are the chances that the ZwiftPlay wouldâve been shipping globally had it not been wireless and stuffed with batteries I wonderâŚ
Just another reason Iâll continue to say they shouldâve made wired ones tooâŚ
I donât think thatâd make any difference.
Is there any evidence that the countries itâs not currently shipped to have a policy preventing it being shipped?
That would mean they also couldnât have mobile phones, Bluetooth speakers etcâŚ
In this day and age wired devices are classed as old technology.
The cost of shipping batteries is significant; especially across the globe, far more restrictions.
Zwift Click and Zwift Hub ship globally right? Unless Zwift was piggybacking off of Jetblack on their global shipping (possibility), and now Wahoo (highly likely).
But itâs definitely a possibility that the batter(ies) are a culprit here.
Just throwing the dice; personally not shipping them globally âjust becauseâ doesnât seem like a ârealâ answer.
You may say old class; but thereâs definitely enough evidence that more folks want wired instead of wireless trainers! (myself included).
Wired devices very much still have their place.
(obviously however in the case of the play controllers; would likely only be capable on Mac/Windows devices, so a clear limitation that I understand)
While I also tend to prefer wired to wireless for several reasons, I feel you and I are in the minority, and Iâm keen to see the evidence you see?
To be honest, I wanted a wired trainer 3 years ago but then I bought a Kickr Core which I connect via Bluetooth and Iâve never thought about wanting a wired trainer since. My priorities are mostly about reliability of connection and not wanting to charge or replace batteries.
I assumed the fact of existence should be enough proof that somebody wants it.
The growth of trainers into Wifi just as well.
My point being is, being limited to a single output connection type, which is already extremely well known for being in a frequency range used by billions of other devices around the world, is potentially putting yourself into a corner.
IMO, even if the two play controllers were wired together, and used a different battery type, say user-replaceable, we could be in a different place (or not! Weâll never know).
Personally Iâm a big fan of Oculus/Metaâs VR controllers which just use my normal AA batteries; which Iâve been using rechargeable NiMHâs for over a decade now with zero flaws, from devices like camera flashes, to my toothbrush, to said Oculus VR controllers; and the batteries have held up great.
By wiring the two controllers together also limits frequency interference and connection counts (clearly), not to mention component count, which surely couldâve been a large cost saving measure.
Anyways, Iâm just saying; I think there couldâve been better solutions in this space.
This is getting pretty far off topic however.
But I still disagree that steering doesnât give an unfair advantage; itâs just âdifferent.â
And itâs pretty clear on this thread that most folks who have tried it agree somewhere in that realm, that steering is definitely not âoverpowered,â just⌠âdifferent.â
There are for sure some very specific use cases where it can make or break an event (swinging outside and not letting someone draft), sure, but thereâs no guarantee that that wonât be fixed.
As steering connected vs disconnected is still very ⌠ânot fixedâ, as it were.
I found what that was about on my Zwift machine. I upgraded the internal Bluetooth and wifi card on that old Mac Pro to a much newer one but still connected to the original antennas for wifi and Bluetooth. WiFi is okay but Bluetooth thatâs a problem, the original antenna is not that suitable.
When I used a newer (but slower) laptop I had no steering disconnect issues.
100% agree with the OP. People are free to disagree but it spoils the race when you get in a break and someone can draft you but you canât draft them. If itâs about reality well in a road race anyone swerving about would get a mouthful of abuse so I assume zwift is ok with that ?
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Itâs not reality. Itâs a computer game. In computer games you need to learn to use all of the tools that the game designers have provided.
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Zwift forces people without steering to ride right through the middle of other riders. Steering doesnât change that one bit. If riding in IRL dangerous ways makes you want to verbally abuse people, thatâs happening, steering or not.
Iâm sure someone will tell you âitâs a gameâ. And it doesnât spoil a race overall, it probably enhances the race for those with steering.
I sort of get your annoyance. Maybe if the draft wasnât so narrow so you can no longer steer to the edge of the road to stop others getting your draft.
But then the steering folk will complain about losing that advantage. You canât please everyone.
If Iâm not mistaken steering was usually disabled previously in races (when it was mostly folks with Kickr Bike).
appreciate the sentiment, but thatâs my one small beef with steering. though itâs improved since release so i canât really say it causes me any problems now
think about this way: if youâre two up off the front and one of you has steering and one doesnât, and the guy with steering wants to be cute, or just isnât switched on, both of you suffer for it. iâll use an anecdote: there was a guy from a ZGP team in a B race i was in some months ago - anyone thinking about it, dont bother as he DNFed - who went up the road. knowing that everyone on that team is fit and knows their way around the game, i thought iâd bridge across and did so and gave a pull. when i sat up, he moved over to the left and tried to press on so i immediately went back to the group behind us who consisted of steering and non steering users and towed them onto his wheel myself out of sheer irritation
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Right, I referred to that above. Previously, in a two-rider break, only the person in back got to be a jerk. By not taking a pull if they didnât want to. Some people would come through and take a pull. More would not. So now steering allows the person in front to be a jerk too. If they want to. Some will steer you out of their draft. More, I think, wonât.
my only beef with it - again, itâs not really much of a beef - is that if someone moves their avatar out to the left in that situation, youâre basically forced to respond by being a â â â â â , like i did. really, the game should put you at least mostly onto his wheel automatically. half wheeling isnât exactly winning anyone any friends IRL, but if you do that in the real world then at at least the message is clear and intentional
i think there are other benefits/drawbacks to steering that make it more or less balanced overall. having done a lot of TTTs recently, iâve heard a few âmove in and give me some draftâ type of calls in discord so itâs not like the guys with it are always doing it intentionally either. but the end result can be just as irritating for both steering and non steering users regardless