Observant Zwifters riding Stage 4 of Tour of Watopia this week may notice subtle changes to the Jungle’s dirt roads. Here’s are some screenshots:
Do you see the difference? The ToW surface (we’ll just call it “gravel”) is a greyish color instead of red/brown, and the gravel is more grown over with green plants.
Some riders felt the new gravel was dustier than the standard Jungle dirt, but we’re not sure this is the case – we think there’s just a lot of dust because there are a lot of riders in the ToW events.
New ToW Gravel:
Standard Jungle Dirt:
New Surface Is Big News
If you free ride or do a non-ToW event in the Jungle today, you’ll be riding on the standard Jungle dirt. But if you ride in the Jungle during a ToW Stage 4 event, that dirt magically transforms to the new gravel surface.
As far as we know, this is the first time Zwift has rolled out a new surface for a specific event. Presumably, this is a programmatic surface swap – that is, both types of surfaces are defined game-wide in terms of Crr, sounds, and visuals, and every bit of “path” in Zwift’s worlds has a default surface type. For this event, a custom setup flag was set, effectively saying “If surface type = dirt, swap it for gravel”.
This is an interesting development. Let’s consider what it could lead to:
- Just having a “gravel” surface type makes sense – it’s something Zwifters have been pushing for for a long time. There should be gravel roads on Zwift where gravel bikes outperform MTB, then rougher roads (perhaps only singletrack trails?) where MTB outperform gravel bikes. Maybe this is a step in that direction.
- Events with custom road types: the Jungle could be paved. A cobbled climb up Alpe du Zwift. Swap all dirt on a route for pavement… and swap pavement for dirt! Or a super fast glass road for a Tempus Fugit TT.
- Swapping surface types could change the very nature of many routes on Zwift, creating attack points where none existed before.
- If surface types change, so does rolling resistance. Not a huge deal if you put in a surface type with higher Crr, but if you use a lower Crr riders will be setting PR times on courses which they can never beat.
The Big Difference: Lower Crr
While the gravel is visually different from the standard dirt, perhaps the biggest difference is one you can’t easily spot. The new gravel surface has lower rolling resistance (Crr) than the standard dirt.
The stock Zwift Gravel wheels (which everyone uses for ToW Stage 4) have a Crr of .018 in the standard dirt. But on this new gravel surface, their Crr is .012! That’s a significant reduction in resistance which is noticeable in terms of how much power it takes to hold a particular speed on course.
By our calculations, a solo rider holding 40kph on standard Jungle dirt would be putting 147W into overcoming rolling resistance. But when the Crr is lowered to .012, the same rider only needs to put in 98W to overcome rolling resistance.
No Bike Choice? No Big Deal.
For Stage 4, Zwift is placing everyone on the stock Zwift Gravel frame and wheelset. Some Zwifters have complained about this, because they wanted to use the “faster” new gravel wheelsets which Zwift recently released (read about those here and here).
But here’s the thing: we don’t actually know if those new wheelsets would be faster on the new gravel surface or not! Remember, they roll faster on dirt (.016 Crr vs the standard .018). But if they roll at .016 on the new gravel surface, that would make them significantly slower than the stock Zwift Gravel wheels which roll at .012.
So don’t sweat the bike choice thing. Everyone’s on the same setup, and the new gravel surface makes for a faster trip around the Handful of Gravel route than you could have with any other setup. Get dirty, and have fun!
Questions or Comments?
Share below!
Road feel on the Tacx Neo 2T is different too! At first it felt to me like something was wrong then I noticed the different surface.
Nice! How would you describe the difference?
Hard to describe, felt to me a bit like cobblestones but with fewer stones and more space between them.
The gravel “road feel” is super lumpy and weird, much more annoying than “dirt” and I turned it off about 30 seconds in to the “gravel” section.
Me Too! It was horrible!
I think that Mike’s description as ‘lumpy and weird’ is pretty spot-on. For me it isn’t even the individual aspects of the feel, so much as they they were just regular and repeated in a sort of metronomic manner. It *might* be better if it felt more randomized.
I would describe the feel of the gravel surface on Tacx Neo as a rutted gravel road. The dirt road just feels rough. The gravel road feels rutted rough, the frequency of the rut feeling is less frequent than what I feel on cobbles.
I think they were trying for washboard in a couple spots. The road look should reflect it as well. Other spots it was just loose and slippy. Maybe that’s what they were going for but it felt like a trainer issue. I don’t need sketchy downhills on the trainer.
I dunno, I didn’t mind it. Was interesting to have something different. It’s why I bought the Neo vs. a kickr.
Same with the Tacx Neo 1. To me it felt like my wheel was slippjng a bit with each pedal stroke. It was worst in the downhill gravel section of the lead in. Later in the event the effect was not so obvious, or I just got used to it.
Just had a chat with ZHQ. Sounds like they’re hearing the Neo road feel feedback, and will be changing it. They just can’t push out a game-wide update across all platforms before stage 4 ends. But possibly for makeup week?
Good news, thx @Eric Schlange !
That’s good to hear that they recognize and are fixing issues quickly. As you can see from attached image, I was having some crazy intermittent cadence spikes….150 to 190 for a fair amount of time each time they occurred. Power ups were disabled for this stage but apparently I kept running thru the hidden banners that awarded the hamster on meth on its wheel power up. 😉
Thank god. I had to quickly turn off road feel. It felt like going over metal bridges over the Chicago river where there are these seams every few feet. Just awful. Nothing like riding gravel or dirt.
For me on a Neo 2 I would also describe it as though it felt like the wheel was slipping too. I turned it off after about 30 seconds. I normally enjoy the dirt and cobble feel, but didn’t enjoy the gravel feel at all, as it was. It will be interesting to see what it’s like after they change it.
It’s a bit like a wild horse that is trying to buck you off, a very strange feeling en diffucult to hold a certain cadence!
What is/has been Crr on road wheels on tarmac Eric?
.004. See https://zwiftinsider.com/crr/ for details…
If they start doing more to develop off road surfaces as this (and the new gravel wheels seem to indicate), I’d love it if they would turn Repack Ridge into a circuit (and allow events using it to turn off steering and the auto swap to mtb if event promoters desired). As far as scenery goes, Repack Ridge and the dirt stretch of Makuri that’s not part of the temple climb (“the woods” section from the Kappa Quest route) are my two favorite stretches of road in the game and I’d love to race on them and stretches of road like them.
Agreed. I’d love to do Repack Ridge here and there as it’s a really nice looking route. Not really interested in steering though. Wish we had to option to go through it without steering activated.
To be honest, I was looking at trying to get more motion into my riding but don’t have the budget for a full on rocker plate at the moment after just buying my first direct drive smart trainer (dumb trainer died about 2 weeks back), so I thought about getting one of those regular Sterzo things. Then Zwift had their sale on the Sterzo Smart for like $60, and I figured that for ~$20 more that getting the regular Sterzo just to move about a bit, I’d get the Smart one mainly so that I could ride Repack Ridge (and in case they ever implement steering in a better way in the future). I tried riding Repack Ridge once without the ability to steer and, while I really enjoyed the scenery, I didn’t appreciate how slow I was as I bounced from side to side across the course, often riding through boulders, and then eventually took off flying over Titans Grove and the dessert.
You can make your own rocker plate. I did it for about £100/$120
Wow, that sounds great. I guess I have champagne tastes but a beer (at best) budget as I was dreaming of a rocker plate with fore and aft motion as well as side to side.
All the plans I looked at for those were $200+ just for the hardware, and then, with the current cost of wood, I would almost have to value my labor as free to make it much cheaper than some of the commercially available options.
What did you do to make your setup?
Previously, I had rollers with a fork stand that I’d mounted on a platform that I’d made that had wheels that moved forward and backward in tracks on a wooden base, but that platform is only probably 70 cm wide and the wheels are 10-12 cm tall, so I think it’d probably be too top-heavy/unstable if I just mounted a regular rocker that I built on that – I do keep considering trying though.
This just screws up the segment times.
Unless this is the way it always will be if you ride “Handful of Gravel” and if they strava segments are Handful of Gravel-specific, but I don’t know how they could be. As it is, the ToW groups are so big and the draft is so huge, I’m not sure I’d be able to match the segment times for any of my ToW rides so far anyway.
I think the double draft + double power ups + riding with 1,000 other people, screws up the segment times more than the gravel road.
both my PR’s on the alpe did not record as a segment from TOW BTW
Segment times already screwed up because it used to have same rolling resistance as paved surface. Will never be as fast again!
Yeah! We need a special event where the jungle is pavement again so we can get segment times to compete on the veloviewer leaderboard. I’m serious, I’d love if that happened.
Something is wrong on zwiftpower. Starting from the 18:00 CET Stage 4 event, a large number of riders got ‘filtered’ for WKG violations. Even if this were a race with enforced categories, my 3.8 w/kg should not have been an issue.
They’re making a bunch of ZP changes for ToW events today, actually. I’d just check back later.
I noticed the same thing today. Everyone over 3,3 w/kg in the Stage 4, Cat C ride got WKG (at first). But approx. 20-30 mins later, results got updated and seems to be in order. I also noticed that Zwiftpower added 19 seconds compared to my “in-game” finish time..
I’m on the tacx bike and I quite liked the new feel, most realistic yet, made the legs work just like IRL
Following your gravel post, I had my new Gravel bike all equipped & ready to roll stage 4 😁. Stock gravel it is then.
Very well written once again Sir! The course was a fun ride.
Thank you for all you do for Zwift, very much appreciated.
Wow, THAT explains it! I noticed bizarre feel like intermittent slipping on my Tacx Neo and it was causing powers jitters, so quickly turned off the “road feel” during the not-a-race. I love the idea of actual gravel as an alternative to dirt/tarmac, though hopefully they’ll catch up the bugginess of the road feel before putting more put there.
I do kinda hate that same road is sometimes gravel sometimes dirt depending on the event. Seems the road/trail maintenance crew have too much free time.
Very nice ride and different look and feel! Congrats. Having same equipment also is good because pit people at same level bar
Tacx Neo2T owner. I lasted about 20 seconds before I turned off road feel. My son left it on and complained about sore knees afterwards. Some road feels like cobbles can be annoying but I find that just motivates to push through them. Stuff like cobbles also smooths out with higher speed. If this how gravel is gonna feel they should put the new fox gravel fork in the drop shop so we can pick it up and use it to dampen the feel.
It felt like they created the gravel ‘feel’ by using the cobble pattern but with only one cobble every couple of seconds. The result was jarring. My preference would be to ditch the bumpy feel completely and give it a smooth feel just like dirt.
Well…I guess all my hand-wringing about just wasting all my drops on a mountain bike and then not being able to buy a gravel bike in time for Stage 4 is a moot point. 🙂
As always, thanks for the info, Eric!
Yes! Just did ToW4 and for the first five minutes thought something was going wrong with my Neo2 before I realised it was the road feel and surface. I found it uncomfortable initially but after a little while it started to fel more like “gravel” than previous bumpy dirt road. It feels like the surface is slipping a little under the back wheel. You know… just like gravel. Kudos to the developers for trying this out, although I can understand it’s not going to be for everyone. Was it just me or did it also feel a little different on the wooden planks? Possibly just down to coming off the “gravel”.
I think it’s a bit flippant to simple say no bike choice is no big deal. While ‘just a game’ a lot of us paid a large amount of hard earned drops for the latest gravel bikes specifically to get the benefit for these gravel events. I bought the Crux so it would have the benefit of being lightweight up the climbs, but instead we’re all stuck on the same old Zwift stock bike. Then they tell us that the gravel surface is specific to this event, so once ToW is over I can’t go back on the Crux to see what a difference it makes. Unless they bring out this surface for actual free ride routes it’s making yet another mockery of the whole gravel bike addition and we could have saved the drops for something that actually has some benefit in-game.
There was a note in game or via email that gravel would always be accessible. So something is coming, not just a return to dirt. And your gravel bike purchase is still good in Makuri.
that said gravel slowdown is more like irl road speed, ignoring drafting, so I’ll probably stick to road to feel like a hero. And extra heft effect should double in gravel, but didn’t feel like it did – imagine all those little gravel puff mounds’ effect on 50kg riders.
Answering the question nobody asked:
Yes you can super-tuck on gravel!
I enjoyed the “gravel” stage, but that route was so boring
So boring. Just the worst route ever. Not even a power up.
So, who exactly asked for this? There is a massive list of bugs to fix, and legit new feature requests (UX, handcycling/paracycling, race categorization just for starters), and ZHQ is allocating resources to make a dirt road not a dirt road, possibly temporarily for one event. This smells like another case of doing it because someone at Zwift thought it was cool, kind of like the audio change in the last revision. I am becoming increasingly disillusioned with Zwift’s complete lack of focus on what users really want.
Bought my Neo on 28th of November, 2018.
Received it on 4th of December, 2018.
Turned off road feel on the same day.
What a boring route. Also if you’re going to force my bike change, PLEASE CHANGE IT BACK!
I agree that they seemed to be shooting for “washboard” with the road feel, but ended up with lumpy and weird. I turned it off 1/2 a lap in.
Glad they are trying new things with tacx road feel but they missed the mark with this one, it felt like riding with two flat tires. Conversely the bridge sections felt pretty cool 😎
Agree with the comments “boring route”. As for the new surface – it felt like riding through molasses! Did I miss something here? The intent of the gravel was supposed to LOWER crr, not bog riders down in the mud! Hated this stage – sorry!
This reminds me of RGT “magic roads” (community routes) where the road “skin” is defined for the event, not as part of the road itself. The skin doesn’t affect Crr though so segment times are unaffected.
This guys should stop wasting time of gimmicks and focus on get more serious tarmac roads on world’s they already ha e