I know @Dave.T is very keen.
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I got it confirmed. We’re some that gonna test ruberband at sunday. First feedback on event created is that it is not visible on main screen,it can Only be seen by notification on companion app and Only once. I saw that bandit group event was shown on main screen so everyone could see it. Not ours
@Eddy_Lee i have added double draft and the Rubber band to our private event next Wednesday if you want to monitor it on a smaller group, Also feel free to use it to test any settings you want to try, i have warned everyone anything can happen
@Eddy_Lee Just done the Bandits Tuesday Social with the band and double draft, My thoughts below
first lap around 90 riders Rubber Band bunched riders way too tight , lots of erratic riding with people going through lamp post stationary bike building and trees,
Second lap As the group dropped to under 60 riders the band worked better,
Overall opinion needs improvements including below
1 Allow riders over a larger area with better road positioning to get a more natural effect,
2 less grouping, seams to work better with less riders on the ride, see the first picture riders across the road rather than in a tidy group
3 maybe use it on club events with a 50 rider limit
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@Eddy_Lee yes please I have a club ride I would like to test rubberbanding on. Please do get in touch 
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@Eddy_Lee after ride thoughts
1, grouping was weird , With the group too tightly grouped together and poor road positions, Also erratic riders riding through obstacles
2 , Ride speed was really slow especially on descents
3, keep everyone together on meetups works better apart from the grouping issue which limits dropped riders speed,
4, We were also slammed into a building just before the end
Tried it on a public event, ZHR Weekend Group Ride, as an experiment.
The actual rubberbanding works well, a nice tight group with no strange dynamics as it used to have. However, the speed was woefully slow. A steady 2.5w/kg ride where we would expect to cover 40km, instead only managing 25km.
How is the speed calculated, as most riders were riding at the correct pace. Will one rider coasting at the back drag everybody down? Or is it a fixed pace, regardless of how the group rides? In an group ride with a leader, shouldn’t it be based on the leader’s pace only?
We tested the rubber band today. Unfortunately, it was a very small, 4 people group (weather was too good here). Here is what we found:
- The late joiners were not dropped in the group but started at the beginning of the course. We managed to regroup manually (the front people stopped and waited for the late joiners).
- The speed of the group was very low for the power output (compared to a standard zwift or keep it together meetups). It did not seem to make much difference how hard we were pedalling. Stuck around 21-23 Km/h. We tried to make the group faster with some synchronised efforts but it just gained us 1-2 km/h more.
- A few times that someone stopped pedalling, the whole group slowed to almost a stop.
- The movement of each rider in the group was jerky and erratic. Unlike the meetups where the riders rotate smoothly.
As a summary, it more felt like an iron band than a rubber band. It felt like the system was not allowing any give. For example in the meetups, when someone puts a lot of power they will move in the front of the group and then gently pull the others back. Here it was almost instant. It was unusually slow compared to standard rides.
Many thanks for enabling this for us Eddy.
Happy to continue testing.
J.
@Eddy_Lee I would love to test rubber banding for my club, it is a small club with large ride abilities. The sooner this feature is available to clubs the better - happy to help in anyway to get this working.
Please let me know what I need to do to enable this to happen?
Thank you
Chez
Just wanted to provide an update on this! Thank you all for those who have tested this and this will be coming out soon along with various other event settings as well. I do not have a timeframe as of now but it is something that is very high on our list of things to do.
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Thank you for the update Eddy.
We are looking forward to having it in the club rides. Creating meetups with hundreds of followers is a nightmare!
Do you have any news when this is going to be rolled out?
Thanks
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Hi @Eddy_Lee , does it work now with this rubberband effect? in a club group ride? …i cant seem to find a way to keep everyone in my club together?…thanks if if you can help
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looks like it´s still not released, but needed urgently
Yes please, I could REALLY do with this for rubberbanded club rides with my club over the Northern Hemisphere winter.
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I wonder why this feature is taking a while to roll out for clubs? It exists for training rides, group rides, and meetups already.
I expect it’s the usual spaghetti code issues.
Probably the person who wrote the original rubberbanding isn’t at Zwift any more, no-one really understands it and it may well be safer to rewrite it from scratch for clubs rather than start messing with the already-buggy current code for that (evidence = all the long-standing bugs in rubberbanding that haven’t been fixed).
Maybe, though it seems to have come out of testing phase and is a normal rule tag anyway on Zwifthacks for searching for events. Makes me think this is now a standard option for community ride organizers? I’d think it meets of minimum of stability and usefulness if so, though it’s been a while since I joined one of these.
This is a toggle for events, but it does not work well. As a general rule we would not use it unless the organiser was extremely insistent.
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OK, that means no timeframe when it will be available?
I’m not involved in Clubs I’m afraid so I’m not sure.
I’m sure Ryan will be along before too long with an update.