Zwift ignores my route choices

Well I think it happened again. I uninstalled, restarted the Android tablet, and installed again. Then I had a go at Paris. The Champs-Élysées route worked fine. I did a lap and a half, and got the badge just after passing through the finish banner for the second time. The lead-in was half a lap at the start.

Then I dropped out of Zwift and back in again, and chose Lutece Express instead. It’s a very similar route, so I wasn’t too surprised that I couldn’t see much difference. This time I did more than a lap and a half, finishing most of the way up to the Arc de Triomphe for the second time. No badge. As far as I can tell, I’d done Champs-Élysées again, in spite of my choice. Although it’s hard to be completely sure, given that there’s no real feedback as to what you’re doing.

This is the reverse of the main Champs Elysees route, but you should have still gotten a badge for completing it. You are set as private so I can’t see your activities to help determine if you just aren’t going far enough to get the badge or in the correct direction. The lead in is a little longer on the reverse route, 3.5 km lead in, plus the 6.6 km route.

The Champs and Lutece courses are the same route, with the same official start/finish arch, but ridden in reverse directions (and with slightly different lead-in distances). Champs runs counter-clockwise, finishing uphill on the final drag (facing the Arc away in the distance up the hill), while Lutece runs clockwise, finishing downhill on the final drag (with the Arc behind you). Did you stop your Lutece ride immediately after crossing what you expected to be the finish line? What was the distance? Lead-in (3.5km/2.2miles) + official course (6.6km/4.1miles) should have yielded ~ 10.1k/6.3miles. Any chance you stopped too soon? To begin and finish the Lutece course, you should round the Arc twice, but you mentioned finishing…

…most of the way up to the Arc de Triomphe for the second time

I was definitely going the same way around both times. I know the route well from watching the Tour for many years on TV. I’d have spotted it immediately if I had reversed.

However, I’ve just tested again, initially on Windows. As above, I can’t actually ride on Windows, owing to lack of sensors. However, for Lutece Express, this time I spawned facing the “wrong” way compared to the actual Tour route, on the west side up hill towards the Arc. So I’m pretty confident that I would have been riding the Lutece route, unlike when I actually rode earlier this evening.

Then I went back to Android and made several tests, spawning but not riding each time. In each case, I was now facing in the correct direction for my chosen route. So, at least for Paris, it’s working now. I’m pretty confident that I was not making an error earlier though, and did in fact choose the Lutece route for my second ride. It’s hard to believe that I could consistently have failed to choose routes so many times in recent days.

I’ll report back next time I’m actually on Zwift, and see what happens. Thanks for all the attention.

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Mixed success. I did manage to ride Lutece Express. Then I did part of Ventoux Top, but I think that’s the default for France anyway (i.e. the one you seem to get if you start riding without actively choosing a route in that world). Then tonight I even managed Duchy Estate, which was one of the ones that caused problems before. So I saved that, went back to the start screen, and thought I’d try Queen’s Highway. No joy. Back round the UCI course again. Although, after I’d given up, I did try killing the Android app completely and starting it again, and that time I think I spawned somewhere different, so I’ll try that again next time.

It’s a real pity that you have to ride round a route to find out what route you’re on. It would be much more sensible if it just told you on the screen.

It’s a real pity that you have to ride round a route to find out what route you’re on. It would be much more sensible if it just told you on the screen.

If you’re having a legitimate tech issue, it’s one thing–but for normal use, you do not have to “ride round a route to find out what route you’re on,” since in fact it does tell you on screen before you start riding. I don’t believe there is any consistent “default” route for each world. For example, I just opened Zwift on my laptop. The pre-route-selection page looked like this:

If I simply click RIDE, I’m headed for Greatest London Flat, since that’s the randomly assigned route that is currently selected (but I can go into London and select any route I want before clicking RIDE). As evidence that GrLonFlat isn’t the London consistent “default” route, I closed out and re-entered, seeing this:

Hopefully you see that now the randomly assigned route is London 8 (I still haven’t actually entered the route selection page). If I want to ride London 8, I just click RIDE. If not, I click the blue ROUTES and enter the actual course selection page:

From here I can click any London route I want before riding. E.g. if I want to ride the Classique, I scroll up and click Classique:

Then the orange OK, and then back out on the former page, I click RIDE, and I’m headed for the Classique route.

As a side-note, if you’re on a device where you can “kill the app completely,” (not deleting and reloading, but forcefully quitting the application, not just exiting the game) you should always do so between each ride. This has been shown to solve some local/temporary bugs/glitches.

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Thanks for posting. Yes, you’re describing exactly the process that I use to choose a route. But my issue is that, having done that, that is often not the route that I get. My throw-away and frustrated remark about the ride screen not showing the route name (everything but, in fact) was precisely because of this - it takes several miles of riding, and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Zwift worlds, to be sure of what route I am actually on, or else I keep going to the end when a badge pops up (if this is a new route, and the game is feeling kind today). Sometimes, I never do find out.

Regarding default or random routes, even killing the app in between, I’m getting Jungle Circuit, London 8 and Queen’s Highway on every Android start today. It’s possible that that is related to my issue of course, since it too is about fixed routes. Windows seems more variable but, as above, I don’t/can’t ride with Windows, and in any case there’s some evidence that the same issue would happen there.

As before, I’m grateful for contributions to this thread, but it’s perhaps significant that no-one is saying, “Oh, that’s happening to me too.” This may also be the point to declare that I’m on a Samsung Galaxy S2 SM-T713 tablet that is not, I think, on the official list of supported platforms, but in every other respect seems to run Zwift quite happily.

In the meantime, I’m really hopeful of getting the right route tonight, as I’m hoping to ride in the IRL world :slight_smile:

I happen to have an S2 (its my bedside alarmclock and never done Zwift duties) so I tried a few things, which wont be helpful to you @oldandslow but info all the same …

Firstly, super interesting that I can exit a ride and not have to start Zwift again, I simply go back to signin screen and click to go to pairing. Certainly quicker.

I didnt pair with any of my kit but was keen to see if I would spawn where I intended. Out of the 20-25 times I tried, 100% went to exactly where the I expected to go on these maps. I did Jungle route a fair bit given that was one highlighted. No problem. France/Paris not on rotation so didnt try those.

The other observation is that running Zwift on this particular platform does indeed default route selection to the last used route . If you select say Surrey Hills on London but decide to go Jungle route in Watopia, then It wont default to Surrey Hills next ride unless I had selected that route and initiated my last London ride on it.

I didnt know that the S2 was/wasnt supported but it looks like it would work for me but I didnt actually ride anything - this was armchair rides only initiated.

no-one is saying, “Oh, that’s happening to me too.”

I have never had it happen. There has to be something going awry with your setup. Maybe you’re on to it with the S2 (?), but how to be sure?

I’m hoping to ride in the IRL world

Enjoy! But… you just know you’re bound to make a manual turn and then you won’t get a route badge!! :wink:

Dean

Thanks. I assume that the thing about going back to the sign-in page is Android rather than the S2 specifically. You’re right that that is what has always happened. I’ve seen talk of exiting Zwift, but that’s not really an Android thing to do - I’ve only ever seen one or two Android apps that had an exit option. I can’t compare Windows because my installation is on a desktop with no space to be able to see its screen from a bike - I only installed it so that I could enter unlock codes, which you can’t do in Android :slight_smile:

I think you’ve given me some confirmation over “default” rides. Personally, I find that so many rides start in the same few places or areas that, without riding, I can’t figure out what route I am actually on. But I’m a relative newbie, and you may know the worlds better than I do.

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You should be able to use ZCA on your phone as a BLE bridge. When the pairing screen comes up on Windows, look for the gear icon in the upper right. That’s where you can select native Windows BLE or ZCA bridge.

^ I would venture a guess that whatever the problem is, you aren’t going to be getting a tech solution from Zwift in light of this information :grimacing: (cue “you wouldn’t get a [speedy] solution anyway lol” responses)

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@Jim_Mattson Is there a benefit in using a bridge? Couldn’t I just get an Ant+ dongle or something? But, as I mentioned, the Windows desktop is in a place where I couldn’t fit a bike in order to see the screen. Android is working for me other than the issues I’ve reported, and there was some reason (see above) to think they were happening on Windows anyway.

So I’m not sure why I’d want to complicate things?

Android is working for me other than the issues I’ve reported, and there was some reason (see above) to think they were happening on Windows anyway.

I don’t see anything in this thread to suggest that you were having the same issues with Windows as you do with Android (at least in terms of route selection is concerned, since you can’t currently ride via Windows due to computer placement/access).

Near the top of the thread, you said that you tested the Ven-Top spawn point with Windows and…

I pressed Ride I was on Marina Sprint, which can’t be right as there is obviously no marina on that route.

But in fact it is correct/normal to see the Marina Sprint leaderboard on the left side of the screen at the beginning of the Ven-Top route (watch any video of YouTubers doing the Ven-Top route and you’ll see it; I also just did the Ven-Top route on Saturday and it was there). So, seeing the Marina Sprint info is not evidence that you aren’t on the Ven-Top route.

Later, you were testing Windows again and said that…

…for Lutece Express, this time I spawned facing the “wrong” way compared to the actual Tour route, on the west side up hill towards the Arc. So I’m pretty confident that I would have been riding the Lutece route

So, here you confirmed that your Windows test had you beginning the correctly chosen (i.e. Lutece Express) course.

I don’t see any other mention by you regarding Windows testing in this thread. It seems that what you have said about testing with Windows suggests that it’s working just fine (again, I understand that you haven’t actually ridden via Windows–but the spawn points appear to be in working order).

Fair challenge, thanks.

The only benefit is not needing a dongle.

Hi all

Given your trouble in commenting on this, I thought I owed you all an update. It’s been much more reliable since my last post here. I’ve been taking the advice to kill the app every time. I’ve seen mention elsewhere of a bug with that - you need to kill Zwift between rides if you want to change routes reliably, so I think I’ve experienced a variation of that.

I’ve also used the hints here, and my greater familiarity with Zwift, which helps with things such as lead-ins and recognising where routes start and end. But basically I think it was the bug above.

I’ve had some really good, if slow as ever, rides, so thanks again to all who answered.

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Hi David - I had the same problem today - quite frustrating! Have you tried contacting Zwift support, and if so, have they said anything?

Hi Rishi

No, no response from Zwift. My advice would be as above - make sure that you have completely killed the app between routes. In Android, that means showing recent tasks and either swiping the Zwift app off the screen from the list, or clicking on a cross icon against it, depending on your Android version. That seems to be working reliably for me.

Really clunky if you want to do more than one route in a session, but there we are. Zwift has some really odd features like that. Also that you can’t check on your progress, garage etc. without starting a ride. Weird.

This is happening to me too!! I thought I was crazy. I tried Duchy Estate and Queen’s Highway last night and had the same issues. I memorized the routes, watched where I was going on the companion app and rode them and never got the “Course Completed” notification. I did manage to see that happen for Champs Elysees so I do know it can, but I have not been able to load and complete a course in the 3 rides since then.

And I completely agree with you about not being able to tell where the course is and where you are relative to it while you are riding. If the course is 4.1 miles long and there is a 1.1 mile lead-in, there should be some indication when the course has started and when it has ended. I can only tell after I have completed more than the lead-in distance that I am not on the course that I selected. I will try to re-load the app and see if that helps. I am very frustrated!!