Dear Zwift.
I love Zwift, it has transformed indoor riding from torture to fun. I spent years riding a trainer the old fashioned way - slogging through a workout using music or watching videos to alleviate the boredom. I would generally only ride 45 min because it was all I could stomach. I remember trying to do 90 min “long rides” on weekends and having to psych myself up all day to get in the right mental place to be able to tolerate it. Each fall I dreaded the loss of light and the cold temperatures that would drive me indoors to do my training.
Last year I learned about Zwift and thought that it might make indoor training a little more tolerable. I thought that having the freedom to go wherever I wanted in a virtual environment would make riding indoors more interesting and therefore make it more likely that I would train through the whole winter. But I was wrong, it wasn’t the freedom of movement that made it more enjoyable. I remember exactly what and where it was in Zwift when I was hooked. I was about 30 min into my first ride and had joined a group of three other riders. We had ridden about 5 miles together and were cruising under the ocean. I was enjoying looking around at the fish, dolphins, and the scenery, then we started up the exit ramp back onto dry land. The two guys on the front started to pull away and instinctively I jumped on my pedals, thinking to myself “no you don’t, no way you’re getting away from me, unh unh!” The other guys reacted to my reaction and we all started working to kill each other. My legs were burning by the time we reached the top of the tunnel and I was praying that these guys didn’t have a whole lot more in their tank because I wouldn’t be able to keep it up much longer. At that moment I realized it was that element of competition, of reacting to real riders that is Zwift’s special sauce. The ability to play reindeer games with other riders of comparable ability has transformed indoor riding from tedium to being compelling. I look forward to riding indoors now. But, this compelling factor in Zwift is quickly lost when you experience connection problems.
For Zwift to be compelling the avatar has to react immediately to the power being put out by the real rider. If you can’t match the other riders power jumps then you can’t have the competition aspect that makes Zwifting fun - connection problems ruin this aspect. If I’m racing against someone, putting out a very hard effort and my connection drops then I’m off the back and the race is over. Even though I continue to put down the power my avatar quietly sits down and “gives up”. It’s at this moment that you’ll hear spewing forth from me a chain of invectives so vile that it would trouble Ralphy’s father. That experience actually ruins a ride for me and unfortunately it happens all the time. I now Zwift with the expectation that my connection will drop 10’s of times each ride for as little as 1 sec to 10 sec, and sometimes much more. Occasionally, my connection is so broken and I have stop mid-ride to restart my Apple TV/computer and the trainer. Sometimes that doesn’t even fix the problem and I have to quit for the day so my trainer can think about what a bad trainer it is and get its attitude back in check for the next day. Lately, most of my riding is by myself because my trainer can’t maintain a stable connection and therefore I can’t enjoy those competitive moments. I’ve lost what makes Zwifting special to me.
This brings me to the point of my letter: Dear Zwift, please publish an open communication standard for connecting trainer and treadmill hardware to Zwift via USB. It’s great to have a wireless connection when it works but it’s even better to have a standard that allows us to bypass the oft problematic Bluetooth and Ant+ connections. I see many posts by others expressing similar frustration trying to fix connection problems. There are many posts on the interwebs explaining how to fix these problems and some people are fortunate enough to resolve them with rather simple steps. Others however don’t get this relief. The range of suggestions span from reasonable to wacky. I’ve tried them all except that I refuse to wear a tinfoil hat while riding. Seriously, you almost have to have an RF spectrum analyzer and a degree in the black arts of wireless networking to be able to troubleshoot the problem and this seems ridiculous to me when there is a much simpler solution - connect the trainer to the computer through a wired connection - poof, problem solved. Making matters worse is that when you are trying to troubleshoot connection problems the trainer companies blame Zwift and Zwift support is equally quick to cast the blame on the trainer. This blame-loop doesn’t help us resolve our problem, it just creates an incredibly frustrating experience that delays us from fixing what is wrong and getting back to Zwifting.
Why not give the people an option to connect through USB in addition to the wireless option. I’m not asking for you to take away the wireless option, it works well for most people, but there is a sizeable contingent of us that have difficulties. I don’t want to be a wireless networking guru, I just want to have fun riding my bike in Zwift. Please publish on open USB standard. There are trainers out there that have this option that could take advantage of this additional connection pathway (the Kinetic R1 for example). A rock-solid connection between the trainer and Zwift is fundamental to achieving the magic of Zwift; a USB connection would allow many more of us to experience the magic that has transformed indoor riding from tedium into a compelling experience.
Ride on,
Robb
I love Zwift, it has transformed indoor riding from torture to fun. I spent years riding a trainer the old fashioned way - slogging through a workout using music or watching videos to alleviate the boredom. I would generally only ride 45 min because it was all I could stomach. I remember trying to do 90 min “long rides” on weekends and having to psych myself up all day to get in the right mental place to be able to tolerate it. Each fall I dreaded the loss of light and the cold temperatures that would drive me indoors to do my training.
Last year I learned about Zwift and thought that it might make indoor training a little more tolerable. I thought that having the freedom to go wherever I wanted in a virtual environment would make riding indoors more interesting and therefore make it more likely that I would train through the whole winter. But I was wrong, it wasn’t the freedom of movement that made it more enjoyable. I remember exactly what and where it was in Zwift when I was hooked. I was about 30 min into my first ride and had joined a group of three other riders. We had ridden about 5 miles together and were cruising under the ocean. I was enjoying looking around at the fish, dolphins, and the scenery, then we started up the exit ramp back onto dry land. The two guys on the front started to pull away and instinctively I jumped on my pedals, thinking to myself “no you don’t, no way you’re getting away from me, unh unh!” The other guys reacted to my reaction and we all started working to kill each other. My legs were burning by the time we reached the top of the tunnel and I was praying that these guys didn’t have a whole lot more in their tank because I wouldn’t be able to keep it up much longer. At that moment I realized it was that element of competition, of reacting to real riders that is Zwift’s special sauce. The ability to play reindeer games with other riders of comparable ability has transformed indoor riding from tedium to being compelling. I look forward to riding indoors now. But, this compelling factor in Zwift is quickly lost when you experience connection problems.
For Zwift to be compelling the avatar has to react immediately to the power being put out by the real rider. If you can’t match the other riders power jumps then you can’t have the competition aspect that makes Zwifting fun - connection problems ruin this aspect. If I’m racing against someone, putting out a very hard effort and my connection drops then I’m off the back and the race is over. Even though I continue to put down the power my avatar quietly sits down and “gives up”. It’s at this moment that you’ll hear spewing forth from me a chain of invectives so vile that it would trouble Ralphy’s father. That experience actually ruins a ride for me and unfortunately it happens all the time. I now Zwift with the expectation that my connection will drop 10’s of times each ride for as little as 1 sec to 10 sec, and sometimes much more. Occasionally, my connection is so broken and I have stop mid-ride to restart my Apple TV/computer and the trainer. Sometimes that doesn’t even fix the problem and I have to quit for the day so my trainer can think about what a bad trainer it is and get its attitude back in check for the next day. Lately, most of my riding is by myself because my trainer can’t maintain a stable connection and therefore I can’t enjoy those competitive moments. I’ve lost what makes Zwifting special to me.
This brings me to the point of my letter: Dear Zwift, please publish an open communication standard for connecting trainer and treadmill hardware to Zwift via USB. It’s great to have a wireless connection when it works but it’s even better to have a standard that allows us to bypass the oft problematic Bluetooth and Ant+ connections. I see many posts by others expressing similar frustration trying to fix connection problems. There are many posts on the interwebs explaining how to fix these problems and some people are fortunate enough to resolve them with rather simple steps. Others however don’t get this relief. The range of suggestions span from reasonable to wacky. I’ve tried them all except that I refuse to wear a tinfoil hat while riding. Seriously, you almost have to have an RF spectrum analyzer and a degree in the black arts of wireless networking to be able to troubleshoot the problem and this seems ridiculous to me when there is a much simpler solution - connect the trainer to the computer through a wired connection - poof, problem solved. Making matters worse is that when you are trying to troubleshoot connection problems the trainer companies blame Zwift and Zwift support is equally quick to cast the blame on the trainer. This blame-loop doesn’t help us resolve our problem, it just creates an incredibly frustrating experience that delays us from fixing what is wrong and getting back to Zwifting.
Why not give the people an option to connect through USB in addition to the wireless option. I’m not asking for you to take away the wireless option, it works well for most people, but there is a sizeable contingent of us that have difficulties. I don’t want to be a wireless networking guru, I just want to have fun riding my bike in Zwift. Please publish on open USB standard. There are trainers out there that have this option that could take advantage of this additional connection pathway (the Kinetic R1 for example). A rock-solid connection between the trainer and Zwift is fundamental to achieving the magic of Zwift; a USB connection would allow many more of us to experience the magic that has transformed indoor riding from tedium into a compelling experience.
Ride on,
Robb
Last edited by:
robbrocket: Dec 23, 18 7:51