Trees in a hurricane

A few days ago I went up the Epic KOM, and many of the trees (especially higher up) were moving in a most disturbing way. It was as if some wind had been added to blow the branches around a bit, except they were moving a lot, and the tree trunks were physically moving from side to side and not just swaying. It was quite off-putting.

Not sure if this an intentional change that has gone OTT, or a bug.

I saw someone post on this in another thread, on Alpe du Zwift. So it sounds like it’s not just the Epic KOM.

I’m on Apple TV.

Don’t know what to say, but it seems like climate change is already affecting Watopia in a manner much stronger than originally anticipated by the Zwift community. Yet some bluetooth deniers claim it’s all just a bug :slightly_smiling_face:

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I noticed this, as well, on Alpe du Zwift, and it was quite off-putting. There were a few trees next to each other, and they seemed to be sliding along the ground, back and forth. I remember thinking it was weird that I’d never noticed it before, as I’ve climbed the Alpe almost 100 times.

This was on Friday, Aug. 27th, running iOS on a iPad, most recent app update (I’d updated the app just before the ride).

I noted this, also, in Epic KOM and Alpe yesterday. Running on ATV.

I’ve been up the Alpe a couple of times this past week (using an iPad, as usual, so very basic graphics) and noticed this on just a few trees during the ascents.
Weirdly, it’s always the same individual trees, while others around them don’t move at all. It also seems to me that the movement of each one has a different character: one gives the appearance of a weird sine wave being sent up the trunk, moving the foliage like a hula dancer; for another, the entire tree moves side to side, etc. Maybe these are represented more naturally on machines with greater graphics capabilities.
I’d swear that this effect wasn’t present back in mid-July, the previous time I’d gone up AdZ. It doesn’t bother me, but it isn’t an improvement, IMO. I imagine that the effect is stronger if someone is using a huge, immersive screen.

Having just read the new article on Zwift Insider about the summer intern system at Zwift, I wonder if this was a project given to one of them: “come up with various solutions for making the trees sway in game”, and that was somehow put into prod and then left in game. :face_with_monocle:

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This is bothersome to me.
I understand the desire to show some sort of movement on the higher slopes of Epic KOM and the Alpe.
However, how hard is it to anchor the base of the tree?
Seeing the base of the tree slide around is extremely odd.

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Another thing I noticed yesterday going up the Alpe - On AppleTV ,the moving trees do not have shadows, the stationary trees and bushes do have shadows.

This is beyond bothersome to me. ZWIFT does such an amazing job ensuring that all aspects of the game environments are realistic - bird flight, biker physiques and movements, shadows, etc. And this ‘new’ tree movement is SO UNNATURAL that it really compromises so much other great realism in game. And this has a distracting effect (on me, anyway) during high intensity climbs up the Alpe, as the terrible tree movement really stands out as wrong. Please - at the very least - revert to the previous tree movement code. Wind doesn’t make tree trunks move like seaweed in the water!!

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Agree.
Very distracting.

How hard is it to anchor the base of the tree to the terrain or ground clamp, whatever it’s called.

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The unnatural movement of a few of the evergreen trees on mountain routes ike the Alpe are highly distracting and so incongrouous with the excellent realism of everything else in game. Please anchor the trunks to the ground and stop making them look like seaweed or hula dancers!

Rode up the Epic KOM today - first time since before summer.
Disappointed to see the tree trunks still sliding along the ground.
Seriously - how hard is it to ground clamp the trunk of the tree?

I was trundling up Alpe du Zwift recently, looking for the yeti and admiring the sense that the wind was blowing when I noticed something very odd that i subsequently could not get out of my mind;
Large trees were moving around in the wind as much at the base of their trunks as they were at the top of their highest branches… reality was instantly blown to pieces…

A suggestion: change the algorithm such that the allowable movement is a function of the height above the ground - make it linear to keep it simple (although I believe that in nature the curvature will follow the Fibonacci sequence if you want to be pedantic).
It’s not nice cycling with the sense that there is an earthquake going on !!

Cheers

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This has been happening for a long time and I believe previously reported, but not fixed. You might find a thread and comments elsewhere in the forum. I have seen it on the Epic KOM also.