I last posted this question to Zwift last May and still have not heard back. I think it will be useful to know what kind of trainers people are using on Zwift. It would be even greater to be able to select spcific trainer rides to get as close to real world group rides. For example, I should be able to ride with other smart trainer users, or even more specific, with those who are using Wahoo Kickr. I understand that in the early days you were more concerened about populating the island with enough of any kind of riders. But now since there are plenty of people signed on it would be great to ge closer to the full promise of Zwift; ride with others. At this point, it is not exactly riding with others if I’m using a smart power trainer with accurate profile input and some others are riding on rollers with zero resistance. In fact, I find riding on the Island sometimes demoralizing with so many ‘pro-level’ avatars.
I can’t tell you from the official point of view, just the daily rider.
On monday there were 1.300 cyclists on Zwift. Two month ago i ride with only 80. The zwift team is doing great and that’s the way to go. In order to grow you need to accept all kind of rider/cyclist/trainer. More people is more money and more development for this unique cyclist experience.
You already have a lighting icon indicating the use a power controlled trainer. Maybe this icon can be more informative for others trainers.
People can cheat in so many ways and trainers are different even from one serial number to another (Turbo Muin is an example). I have a rare trainer (Turbo Muin) and i think Zwift did a AMAZING job with it.
The weight is too very important here, everybody is so thin here! and when i changed my weight from 86kg to 76kg i got 13:32 on Watopia.
The age is important in a cyclist? So, at the end you have to many variables besides the trainer.
You are absolutely right about the “fair play” but this sport sim must be funny and enjoyable. It’s impossible to secure the system or even group people in trainer.
But, why don’t you use your trainer in your game name? Maybe more people will follow you and you will see against you are riding.
I don’t think people with trainers without resistance are a problem on Zwift. It’s just useless to use zwift on those trainers. After two month riding here with my Turbo Muin i have improved more than one year without zwift, just because of the competition.
I fail to understand why people are so concerned about others cheating, specifically in regards to the trainer type.
The easiest and most effective way to cheat is to lower your body mass in the software and there’s no way to realistically counter that.
I mean I’m 1m96 IRL, so my weight (~85kg) makes for a pretty big penalty when riding uphill. My absolute power output (Watt) is good, my relative power (Watt/kg) is mediocre. If I were to change my weight to be more in line with what climbers usually weigh (say 65kg), I’d be riding ~25% faster uphill.
Just because I’m curious, what’s the benefit to knowing what trainer someone is using? Zwift works using w/kg as it’s core. Yes, certain smart trainers make have some technical “hiccups” from time to time (the Kickr low power issue comes to mind) and zPower with dumb trainers and no true power meter is apparently easy to screw up, but barring that, it doesn’t matter if your trainer cranks down the resistance on a hill or not, it still comes down to w/kg. If you are riding at 2.5 w/kg with someone else also riding at 2.5 w/kg, you’ll stay more-or-less together, barring any king of weird technical problem. Absolute numbers in terms of weight or power output can, and likely will, change but w/kg is w/kg. Or am I missing something here?
As long as the trainers are on zPower (like my Kinetic Road Machine) it’ll be quite accurate afaik. zPower converts the speed from my sensor to Watts which is a static and known curve (you could mess around with tyre pressure etc from what I heard but the differences will be marginal I’m guessing).
What I think some people have a problem with are the type of trainers where you can callibrate your resistance with a button on your steer. In that case there’s no proper way to determine the proper Watts you put out as far as I can tell since your sensor will just pick up the speed but it won’t pick up if you’re on resistance level 1 or 5 so to speak.
I just have the “basic” system of a plain jane trainer and a dongle. If I had more money I would get a smart trainer. But I don’t, and I don’t care! I’m honest with my weight info and it seems to work just fine. But then again, I’ve never been concerned with watts and all that stuff. If I can keep up with the fast guys, then I know I was having a good day! But, even though I don’ t have resistance, I still have to pedal my ass off to maintain a decent speed going uphill. If someone gets offended at my basic setup for going faster on a virtual riding system, then they need to check their priorities and put some big boy pants on, because there are bigger things in the world to worry about than that!