I hope you are wrong 
The sand in Urukazi seems to be hard-packed sand, not loose sand. So it doesn’t seem unreasonable to give it a similar rolling resistance as tarmac.
Just did Fine And Sandy in a speedy 25mins 146W (~1.7 W/Kg) average on the Evo with DT Swiss 62 wheels.
Besides the section around the start/finish that looks like concrete or very worn tarmac, riding a road bike just looks so wrong over sand, boulders and soil with barely any grass on it.
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Meh, would be an interesting tradeoff in a race on that route, effectively making the hill a little bigger on the 4km loop, or alternatively you could use gravel bike and give up a little on the sprint but be more likely to stay with a faster group.
I rode through a couple of boulders yesterday. It was rather harrowing!
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Perhaps the only surface that behaves as pavement is the new sand (and no dust cloud). There are other gravel type roads in Urukazi that produce a small dust cloud, and you do seem to slow down on road bikes on these patches of dirt. 
@manda_F maybe you can help educate me.
Thanks!
Also, why do so many routes start on a 4% incline?
As if by magic, Eric has some info to share with us.
Yeah, I did the Makuri 40 route and couldn’t work out how there could be such a big descent through the caves to then end up at sea level.
Yeah i did the new 40km riute today and it starts on a 10%. Total nonsense, also i dont understand why routes don’t start and stop under the banner
Not that i want to be overcritic here and i appreciate the gigantic effort they put in new world but id like they start thingas cyclists rather then video games producers.
No fantasy scenery but real route on the mountains they already have. On watopia alone you could easily add 200km of new routes and France also could be expanded as much as they want if they’d stop making rutes on top of a unrealistic Neon city. They lie twisted roards,fine, Titans grove is a masterpiece
If it was just about me id cycle in watopia only for hours without doing the same road twice like in a dream world
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That seemed to be the difference as far as I could tell - if there was dust, it seemed to be faster to the gravel bike… so I think that looped “climb” on mech isle is actually dirt, not sand.
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Does anyone else think the lack of changes to speed across the different surfaces might not be intentional? That it might have meant to be different but it didn’t work correctly?
No, I think it was in response to all the whinging on here about how there’s no point to gravel being slower and people hate it.
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Makuri is based on Japan, there probably aren’t many mountains there.
(/s if it wasn’t obvious)
Much of the gravel I ride on is compacted gravel and the speed difference compared to asphalt is barely noticeable (though asphalt does tend to get quite rough pretty quickly over here as well…) so I don’t really see what the big deal is. Not that I live on Makuri, of course.
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Use a road bike, just take care on the corners and deeper sand patches, your GP50000s etc. ain’t going to have the grip of nice clean black stuff. 
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Oh, but you just need deep enough rims and the GP5000 will cut through the sand like a knife through butter. Your drivetrain will be toast (especially if you haven’t found chain wax as your personal saviour), but that’s the cost of doing business. (Insert smileys as appropriate.)
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Japan has quite a lot mountains higher than 2000 Meters. (Check Wikipedia with “mountains japan” … I’m not allowed to post links here)
But even if Japan would be flat as a pancake: why do they create such areas for cyclists? Most cyclists like to climb and riding famous climbs is a goal for most of them. I have the great privilege to live in germany and could, if I had the time, travel to the most famous climbs within a day. But what about people from far away? Canada, Japan, Australia, USA? Indoor-Training could give them at least a sense of those climbs.
The problem is that Zwift has grown quite large and got us locked in: Our friends ride their, our level does not go ip and we don’t get drops if we ride on other plattforms. Zwift has us … maybe Wahoo can make RGT to a decent competitor, but I doubt that. BKool and Arouca are too small and Fulgaz and other Videotrainers have their own disadvantages.
But I have to admit that I’m quite surprised that lot of people have the same opinion on zwift content strategy … maybe Someone at zwift follows this discussion closely.
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/s = sarcasm tag 
. Maybe we’ll get a nice mountainous Hokkaido or Nagano biome added to Makuri next time around if we make enough noise. I’m thinking the same thing… if Zwift doesn’t add some proper climbs soon and RGT keeps improving, they could start losing more ‘hardcore’ riders to other platforms that do have more than 2 or 3 real climbs. Maybe Ventoux isn’t very popular but it’s honestly brutal and not very fun on Zwift. AdZ seems popular enough though.
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If Zwift can make the climb very scenic(like what they’ve done with the rest of Makuri), it will be very popular
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It can be as scenic as you like, if it’s to long people won’t ride it.
There is a sweet spot for duration, and the Alpe hits it as the hour goal for climbing it is that sweet spot… This is talking in brush strokes there will always be people outside of the norm…
Zwift could add the prettiest climb they have made, if it takes 2 hours to climb it, it will hardly get used.
The jungle is pretty in Watopia, yet hardly anyone uses it. Makuri is pretty, yet there are lots of people who don’t enjoy it as the course & routes are pretty boring.
You need to engage with it as a cyclist and the terrain over looks imho
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