ZDot: Alpha test of a high-visibility map marker add-on for Windows

General Discussion
1

I’m making a personal project of mine available as an alpha test, to gauge interest and viability for the larger Zwift community.

Here’s what it does:
WhatZDotLooksLike

The center “You are Here” marker is aligned with the middle of the zoom-ed out map view (not the other two perspectives)
The new yellow-dot marker at the bottom moves with you as you move along the profile view

Bonus feature! ZDot will move the mouse cursor off the Zwift screen after a few minutes of inactivity. (It’s annoying to get on the bike only to notice I left the cursor in the middle of the view!)

Help me determine how much more time and effort should be put into this. It’s already sufficient for my purposes, but release to the wider world takes a bit more care.

  • Would you use it? What would make it better?
  • Any incompatibility with your system or how you use Zwift?

If you want to test it out, here’s what to expect:

  • Your Zwifting system needs to be Windows, running at 1920x1080, and the Zwift game needs to be maximized (not fullscreen).
    Why? Because that’s what I run and ZDot is currently hard-coded to those dimensions. Tested on two different systems only. If there’s enough interest for other popular resolutions, we could add detection and support. There may be variations between systems that I’m not aware of even at the same screen size.

  • Zwift needs to be the active window (not in the background, with e.g. Discord being active)

  • You should be comfortable with downloading, configuring and running AutoHotKey scripts.
    Why? ZDot uses AHK, the same as several of the tools over at ZwiftHacks Since this is Alpha, I’m not prepared to help you out with this.

The script files are here along with a very short MP4 video of the map in motion:

2

Doesn’t the cursor disappear after a short while anyway?

One of my biggest problems with Zwift is finding the cursor when I want to give someone a Ride On etc. If it was permanently visible I’d always know where it was.

3

Yes it does. :slight_smile:

I have increased the size of my cursor for that exact reason to find it quicker. It can be anywhere on the 3 screens.

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4

As my zwifting PC is only used for that, I’ve gone into windows settings and made my cursor 5 or 10 times bigger than normal. It’s not very easy to use for other stuff, but it now kinda suits the zwift cartoony interface and I can see it as soon as I move it.

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5

Hmm, yes, I guess it does. How’s this: “If your table fan makes your mouse wobble, preventing the cursor from disappearing while you Zwift, this feature moves it out of the way” :slight_smile:

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