Uphill Sticky Draft Sorted

Cheers Zwift,
Having just dragged myself round Stage 7 ToW, I am very pleased
to say that the “Sticky Draft” that was present uphill, seems to have
been removed. A fellow Zwifter Ricky pointed it out in another post
but I felt that such an improvement deserved a thank you from myself
as I have mentioned it a number of times on this forum.

Passing a fellow Zwifter is now much more realistic and climbing
could almost be called pleasurable. No more powering up, just keep
your pace and power/heart rate where you want it and you glide past.
Massive improvement.

Cheers Zwift.

Amen to that!

Hated it when going for a PB up a climb and you’re on the limit then tack on to a guy going just a smidge less than you, and have to bury it to potter past. Like two trucks overtaking on an otherwise empty road :joy:

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Is this why when climbing up Alpe du Zwift today, every time someone came close behind me, the power drops to zero and my rider comes to an instant stop. After the rider has gone past, Zwift registers the power again and off I go. Actually, I cannot get close to the rider who passed me, as the power drops again. Gets very frustrating on the hairpins with 2 or 3 dropouts as everyone is bunched up.

This update does not seem at all realistic to me. Maybe it works for some, but seems to be another fix which needed a lot more testing before being rolled out. On MacOS at least it is a feature I would rather not have and made for a very frustrating and unpleasant ride.

I don’t think that is a thing. It may be coincidence that your power dropped. this sticky draft is something different, it was that if you came up to someone you needed some extra power to overtake them.

Does not sound like you encountered anything related to the sticky draft. That said, I am not sure what happened to you. If it happens again, your best bet would be a support ticket.

Hi, thanks for your message. I was not describing the sticky draft. My point was that clearly there is a change to the functionality of uphill drafting. What I was describing is a bug that Zwift appear to have introduced in the last update. This bug is very consistent, every rider that came up behind me caused me to stop for a couple of seconds, this also happened 2 to 3 times on every hairpin up Alpe du Zwift. Maybe you are right and it is a coincidence, however it looks to me much more likely to be a bug introduced with the update due to insufficient QA and testing. I guess it probably has not affected many Mac users, since it seems that many cannot run Zwift since the disaster of the last update, unless running Mojave.

Thanks, it is clearly a serious bug, I noticed it on previous rides after the last update, but today it was probably in the range of 40-50 stops (I am reluctant to call dropouts, as seems to be bug not transient). I may or may not have logged a support ticket, I went through all of the hoops and checks to report a query, but at the end it threw up a 404 error. I guess this is typical for the lack of support from Zwift. I’ll try emailing them, but hold little hope.

Was this on the Alpe again? what is your speed and power before your rider stop. Zwift has a minimum speed before your rider will stop.

At times around 250W, then nothing! Rider behind passes and huge power spike when Zwift decided to place nice again.

That is very strange Rob, and you said it only happen on the alpe or does it happen on every road.

Seems to be any climb since the last update, noticed it a few times on Tour Of Watopia. On ToW a few times I got ahead of the group, then instant stop while everyone rode past. I assumed it was just the normal inability of the servers to cope with the load causing dropouts. On the Alpe there were only 83 riders so should not be a performance issue.

I was just looking at the Zwift graphs, it shows 0 power and 0 cadence, but clearly wasn’t. The dips are probably were it decided to stop, the spikes are the stored power when it was ready to ride again.

This is the time where I really miss Zwiftalizer.com you could use it to see if it was sensor dropouts and rule out that possibility quickly.

When there are server issues you will not see other riders, power and speed is on calculated on your local machine.

I agree, if this was random. It was not. As I said early, thank you for explaining what changed in Zwift which caused the bug which I described. Frankly I am getting very tired of the constant bugs and things that do not work. I really do not understand what they have achieved with the 50% subscription increase. They certainly have not delivered any improvements in quality or performance.

I have several friends who have gone up AdZ in recent days, one of which climbs it almost daily. They had no issues. This includes both Windows and Mac. I will go to AdZ this afternoon and see what I find. I will be using a MacBook w/Mojave. Will update here again afterwards.

Edit: Went up AdZ to turn 12. Was passed by a few people. There were no dropouts of power or cadence. All was normal. MacBook Pro OS X Mojave.

Hi @AviationRob: I see Zwiftalizer.com is up and running. You can analyze your log file and see if it is a sensor or network issue.

this is clearly an issue with your setup, not zwift. if it were a problem with zwift, there would be a lot more noise about the issue. try pulling your head out and maybe you could work on fixing the problem, rather than trying to put it on zwift.

Good morning donny, I guess you got out of bed on the wrong side today. My setup has not changed for months. This was not an issue with version 1.0.36387, has been a problem with every race / group ride since Zwift applied the 1.0.36882 update. It was not bothering me that much, until the race on Alpe du Zwift. Just to do some more beta testing for Zwift, I rode the 3R Astoria 8 Line Hilly Race this morning (not how I wanted to spend my day after already doing a 85km outdoor ride) and had exact same 0 power on 3 occasions. Zwiftanalizer shows no network errors, no latency and communication with sensors is solid. When there are no other riders near me, or if I am in a group there is no issue. I believe this release was rolled back as it did not install for many users (reference the white screen thread), maybe others aren’t reporting it as it is always perceived to be the users fault!

Thanks for your feedback. Was this an open ride or a group ride / race. I believe it is only occurring during races, but as I hardly free ride I cannot guarantee it. It is happening in all races since the 1.0.36882 update, not just on Alpe du Zwift. It is only more noticeable on Alpe du Zwift as 0 power / 0 cadence causes a fairly immediate stop. On other races I just see the power cut to 0, but only a lower gradient it only slows, not stops. How is your power connected? I have Garmen Vector 3 power meter pedals, so using these for power / cadence not the trainer.

Hi Gerrie, I tried that. I am not seeing any sensor or network issues there. It is a bit strange as it is showing an Ant+ Channel for the power meters, but I am connecting through BTLE at present. The BTLE data looks good, but the number of messages decreases at times, but never to zero. I was using Ant+ for the power meter, but switched to Bluetooth to see if it was any better. I’ll switch back again for the next ride. I am riding with Garmin Vector 3 power meter pedals, which did cause me a lot of grief in the early days. Since the last firmware update and after changing the battery housings with the warranty replacement (product recall) they have been fairly stable with Zwift. This does seem to be caused by the software update on 1st June, so I guess I need to keep investigating.

I was free riding. I also tested it again today. I rode to the the top of AdZ and was passed a few times w/out issue. I also passed several people and the did not seem to slow or stop. I am using the latest desktop Zwift for Mac:

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