I’ve been using the Zwift Play controllers for a few weeks now, and overall I’ve been very happy with the added value of them! However, I would like to report a few issues I’ve found with Zwift Play, and offer a few suggestions for improvements:
Side buttons don’t adjust workout bias when ERG is OFF: this is either a bug or an oversight. I know it might seem weird to want this functionality, but hear me out. When you’re in a workout and ERG mode is off, you still want to hit your preset target as close as possible, or else you don’t receive the maximum XP for the workout block. So if you have a particularly good or bad day, and you over- or undershoot your preset workout target, it would be nice to be able to adjust the bias on the fly. The side buttons work fine while ERG mode is on, I don’t see why they shouldn’t with ERG off as well.
Haptic feedback starts and stops too abruptly: when you give ride ons or use powerups, you can feel a very sharp and sudden “start” and “stop” in the haptic feedback. It would feel a lot more natural if the vibration motor would ramp up and down a bit more gently, for over a fraction of a second. That said, when braking, the “abruptness” of the vibration is actually very appropriate and natural feeling.
“Press Z to return Ride On” popup disappears WAY too quickly. Often when receiving a Ride On, I’m not even able to press Z in time to return the Ride On. It would make more sense if the “press Z” popup would stick around for at least as long as the name of the rider who gave the Ride On is displayed.
Z button to trigger Ride On button in the sidebar. When the sidebar gives you the option to give a Ride On to a “Zwifter Nearby” (e.g. when the complete a workout, get a PR, …), it would be nice if the Z button could trigger that Ride On. Right now, this is one area where Zwift Play falls short, if we want to interact with the sidebar we still have to use our laptop / tablet / whatever. An elegant solution would be to have a little Z button badge overlay right next to the Ride On button, whenever it shows up in the sidebar. If there are multiple Ride Ons to give, the Z button could maybe trigger them from top to bottom, one at a time.
Thanks to the Zwift team for the genuinely awesome product, and thanks in advance for considering these improvements!
Is it right that I can only pair the controllers when I have the companion open and connected to Zwift on my device? Without the companion, I can’t see the controllers at all on the pairing screen.
Make sure that controllers are not connected to your mobile (Companion app) or any other Bluetooth device.
The best is to forget them with Companion if you use that to chat or have BT OFF on your phone so they don’t get connected.
It’s an old Windows laptop. I’ll give that a go - it’s not been too much of an issue, as they have generally worked fine bar the odd drop out, but was confused whether that was the only way. They just seem to only appear in the search once I have the companion on - will try forgetting them from it. Thanks.
This proposal would be fine if Ride Ons arrived at regular intervals of say every 10 seconds.
But they don’t!
Currently, if I receive two Ride Ons in quick succession, I am usually only successful in returning one of them. I haven’t yet worked out what determines whether the first or the second is successfully returned. But I guess the “channel” is being occupied by download data which is blocking the upload.
I fear your proposal would invalidate the use of the z button.
About not being able to return Ride Ons in quick succession: not sure this is necessarily true. When receiving lots of Ride Ons in a short amount of time, the names of the riders who gave them to you are each displayed for a long-ish time one after the other. It would probably be easy to have the “press Z to return Ride On” function work the exact same way. The only downside I can think of is that if you’ve received a stack of Ride Ons in short succession, there would be some delay until you can return it to the last rider in the row.
You can receive Ride On from people that are not riding.
In the Companion App, you can give a Ride On to riders you follow.
That kind of Ride On will show just like any other Ride On.
But, you cannot return that Ride On, since they are not riding.
I have noticed that when I activate a Draft Powerup while using Zwift-Play, the steering is automatically triggered (even though I’m not pressing anything). If there is a left curve ahead, my avatar immediately moves to the left side; similarly, if there is a right curve, my avatar immediately moves to the right side. Is this intentional? This only happens with Draft Powerups.