Today Zwift launches FutureWorks “HoloReplay” for all Zwifters. (The feature has actually been in game for several weeks, but only enabled for certain testers. Sources tell us it was taken live for everyone today at 17:00 UTC.)
So what is HoloReplay? How does it work, and what sort of fun can we have with it? Let’s dive in and find out!
HoloReplay Basics
HoloReplay is the first iteration of a feature Zwifters have long requested: the ability to ride against your past efforts. If enabled, when you begin any timed segment, a “ghost” of your past effort will show up for you to race or pace against.
Here’s a demo video showing how it works in a Watopia Hilly KOM repeat session:
Only efforts on segments with a leaderboard are HoloReplay-able at this time. (So before you ask: no, you can’t see a HoloReplay of any and all routes and rides you’ve ever done.) Additionally, HoloReplays go back up to 90 days so you’ll be racing your 90-day PR, not your all-time PR.
HoloReplay Options
The main settings menu includes new options for HoloReplay Visibility:
This is where you define how HoloReplays show up as you ride Zwift:
- Personal Best: replays your 90-day PB on every segment you encounter
- Most Recent: replays your most recent effort on every segment you encounter
- Both: replays your 90-day PB and most recent effort on every segment you encounter
- Off: no replays shown
Replayable Segments
HoloReplay is available on segments that include a leaderboard: all timed KQOMs (including Alpe du Zwift!), sprints, and presumably these full routes*:
- Crit City: Bell Lap, Downtown Dolphin
- Innsbruck: 2018 UCI Worlds Short Lap
- London: London Loop
- Makuri Islands: Flatland Loop
- New York: Park Perimeter Loop
- Paris: Champs-Élysées
- Richmond: 2015 UCI Worlds Course
- Watopia: Hilly Route, Jungle Circuit, Jungle Circuit Reverse, Volcano Circuit, Volcano Circuit CCW
- Yorkshire: 2019 UCI Worlds Harrogate Circuit
*We haven’t yet tested every segment to confirm HoloReplay is working where stated.
Precise Replays
If you’ve ever tried to chase a Strava PR outdoors using data from your head unit, you may have experienced the annoyance of time tracking that isn’t based on the actual GPS data from your previous activity.
Zwift’s HoloReplay avoids this by actually replaying your previous activity based on activity recordings saved on Zwift’s servers which even include your left-right location on the road. (That’s right: if you had steering enabled, your hologram will even replay your steering movements.) So when you’re chasing your PR on Watopia’s Hilly Route, your hologram will reflect the precise speeds you hit when going hard up the Hilly KOM and supertucking down the backside.
Your HoloReplay will also wear the same headgear, shoes, and ride the same bike frame and wheels as you used when the replay was created. You’ll even see when you used a powerup in your previous effort, and when you got out of the saddle. (Sadly, it won’t show if your fire socks activated.)
Other Tidbits
Your holograms are not draftable and are only visible to you.
HoloReplays data is not recorded in group workouts or “Keep Together” Meetups. Additionally, HoloReplays will only show up during free rides. They are not visible in workouts, Meetups, Club Events, races, or any other “official” event.
Playing with HoloReplay
What sort of fun can you have with HoloReplay? Here are some ideas:
- Negative Splits: enable the “Most Recent” HoloReplay, choose Watopia’s Hilly Route, then ride up the Hilly KOM. Turn around after the banner, spin easy to the bottom, then turn around again and see if you can beat your time to the top. How many times can you repeat this? Bonus: try it on the Hilly KOM Reverse for a VO2 interval session! (2 sets of 4 climbs with 10 minutes between the sets is a good place to start.)
- Pacing Practice: TT specialists will tell you it’s easy to lose time with poor pacing, especially on technical climbs. Try using your 90-day PR to fine-tune your pacing on a key climb, perhaps easing a bit more on a flatter section and giving it a bit more gas on a steeper bit. You may be able to trim seconds (or minutes) off your best time.
- Custom Pacer Bot: Zwifters have been asking for custom pacer bots since the early days. Now with HoloReplays you can (sort of) make that happen. Ride a route or individual segment at the pace you want to hold, then any time you want to ride at that pace again just pick that route and enable the “Most Recent” HoloReplay. You’ll be chasing yourself around at whatever pace you previously rode.
- Weekly Challenge: set a goal of riding the Epic KOM (~25 minutes), Alpe du Zwift (55-75 minutes), or Ven-Top (90 minutes+) each week, chasing and beating your 90-day best each time.
- TT vs Ghostpack: did you set a PR on a particular route or segment during a Pace Partner ride? You may not be able to hang with your HoloReplay alone on a road bike, but a TT frame will mimic the speed advantage of the pack draft. (Not entirely, but it’ll help a lot.) Grab a fast TT frame out of your garage and see if you can beat your PR and the ghost pack who pulled you along.
- Sprintervals: 30-30 workouts (30 seconds hard effort followed by 30 seconds of recovery) are popular with racers. Why not head to the Watopia Sprint Forward and do some repeats, trying to pip or at least tie your “Most Recent” HoloReplay each time? Sprint to the line, flip a u-turn and spin easy to the edge of the Italian Village cobbles, then flip around again and for another sprint. Start on the easy side, and aim for 2 sets of 5 sprints with a 5-minute rest in between each set if you’ve never done 30-30s before.
- Racing a Fitter You: if you’re carrying some extra weight, you’ve probably wondered “How much faster would I be if I lost a few pounds?” Now you can find out. Change your weight in your Zwift profile (on free rides only, don’t be a cheater!), put in a hard effort on a climb, then come back and see if you can match that time at your real weight. (This is a win-win game, as we see it. If you get beaten by your lighter self that’s inspiration to shed a few pounds. And if you beat your lighter self you can celebrate with cake!)
Just The Beginning
FutureWorks HoloReplay is launching today with solid functionality that we think will be welcomed by all Zwifters. But what else could be done with HoloReplay in the future? Our suggestions:
- Include the ability to race your lifetime PR, not just 90-day
- Be able to see another rider’s HoloReplay. What if a pro rode a particular route solo, then Zwifters as a group could race that pro’s HoloReplay in a recurring event? What if you could race your friend’s HoloReplay?
- Have personal HoloReplays available for all routes, not just those tracked on a leaderboard
- HoloReplay for runners
We’re confident that Zwift will refine and build out HoloReplays as time goes on, much like they did with Pace Partners.
More Details
There are lots of nuances to this feature, so if you have further questions we recommend reading Zwift’s Holographic Replay FAQ. If you want to discuss the feature with Zwift staff, head over to this new forum topic.
Your Thoughts
Share below!
Nice !!
Oh Blimey… Means I’m going to have to try harder every time now. Nice one Zwift. I’m getting older you know. 😁
Great new feature. I look forward to trying this out. To clarify, if you select “most recent”, is that most recent over any time frame, or does it only go back 90 days (as with the PR option)?
Not sure, actually, but I bet it only goes back 90 days.
“Most recent” means the very last time you completed a given segment in the same ride. So, if you did a ride and went through Titan’s Grove KOM one time, turned around and then went up it again, you would see your Replay from the first time you went up it in that ride.
Not sure what you mean by “in the same ride” though, Flint. Most recent includes previous rides too, right? That’s how it’s been working for me.
This easily the best thing since pace partners! A lot of car racing games have had this feature for years, racing you previous best and seeing where to improve. Way to go Zwift!!
Really cool. Sort of wish it would record the efforts in races as that’s where I set all my PRs and would let me try to be more efficient on climbs, but I get that I’m also a lot faster in a race (in part due to going full out while drafting others going full out), so it might create unachievable ghosts to chase.
Thank you, Eric. Your supporting video is a great way to show the various uses of this new feature.
Useless feature to me, given the 90-day PR limit.
Great addition to the discussion 👍 we were all wondering
Good to know. Maybe list all the other things you don’t use so Zwift can remove them. I’m sure your use of Zwift is the most important and will apply to all the rest of us.
Racing a Fitter You:
That is going to effect your CE category if it’s the last thing you did
Shouldn’t. Zwift doesn’t record your w/kg, but your power. So as long as you set your weight accurately, it’s no different from doing other hard efforts.
Is that right? I assumed the CE cats were based on your w/kg efforts, as with the zwiftpower records/categorisations. James Bailey always talks in terms of w/kg too…
also if you race ZRL and have big weight changes it will likely cause a request for verification
If this just works as described and is stable, it’s already an excellent new feature — really a set of new features working together. I’m not *positive* it’s best as a setting applied to all rides, at the level of metric or imperial measures. Do we want it to show every last time? Something we chose as we went into each ride might be slightly preferable…? Clearly at this point they’re relying on data they already (mostly?) had. (I wonder if they used the few weeks while test users had it to also save richer data from previous runs for… Read more »
I hope they eventually extend this beyond free rides. I can understand not including workouts or any event with rubber banding on, but normal group rides and other events would be nice. Sure, you might have had a draft, but that’s possible in free rides as well.
That said, it would be cool to incorporate this in the new route based workouts. Having my record from the ZA baseline ride show up as a hologram in the finish line ride? That would be very helpful!
The Zwift email announcement says the window is two months, not 90 days. Maybe that means they only have two months of saved data at this point, but eventually it will stretch out to 90 days? Or maybe it’s just a typo. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think it’s because they started collecting the data from August 16. I agree it is weird wording in the email though.
That’s a good feature…but when will be available the steering with ant+ ? Why we need to have 2 key (BT only for steering and ant+ for cadence and power and heart rate?)…
And… when steering will be available for every ride or race?
Thanks
Lots of “professional drafters” will find it hard to stay close to their ghost…I’d say!
I’d really like to see the Tempus Fugit added very soon as this IS the TT Route.
What whole routes can I use a Holo Replay to pace myself the whole time? I love that concept of a personalized pacer from the last ride
Never mind I found it up above Sorry
Eric, did you notice that in your video when you started your second attempt up the KOM, before you’d turned off the display of your PR HoloReplay avatar in the settings, that your “PR” holorider spawned 1:12 up the road instead of at the start line with you? This is at 9:03 in your video. It spawned right next to you at the KOM start line on your first attempt, as expected, and your “Prev” ghost rider spawned right next to you in all attempts. Must be a glitch? Also, did you ever figure out why your holoriders were showing… Read more »
Thank you for this informative article. I’m looking forward to trying this out.
Hiya Eric, when I first saw this inadvertently and gave you a heads up it was on volcano circuit but that doesn’t seem to be on your list? Great video and description Thanks John
So I can race against myself when I had draft from others on course, and am then at the whim of how populated the course is when racing my hologram, ie. busier time: advantage vs. hologram, not busy: hologram has the advantage. Should replay the same conditions the hologram had, otherwise you’re not really racing against yourself.
So nice – thx for a good video demonstration 👍😊
This is cool! I really like the idea of pacing the best version of myself up AdZ, Epic KOM or Ven Top. It will be nice if they could make it available for the long flat courses like Eastern Eight, Tick Tock or Tempus Fugit in order to test longer distance TT results on a TT bike.
HoloReplay is one of the nicest features added to Zwift.
I saw the settings for the holo replay but when i went up the Zwift KOM i did not see the holo replay (i chose the ‘both’ option)
“Alpe du Zwift (55-75 minutes)” hahahahahahah!
Okay … I actually like this one!
Anyway to see if a course is halo supported from the ride selection screen?
thanks Mike
I like the addition of the Holoreplay but might be good if you could turn off the Holoreplay from the Companion app. On short course seeing it over and over is not needed also may only want to use it once and going to setting is cumbersome so if there was a way to turn it off like turning off the graph on the screen would be handy.
It’s awesome! I hope one days I can ride with the ghost over free rides, etc. to have a “real” experince with a pace partner
It seems to be cool
Would love to set this up for vEveresting someday.
I’ve been Zwifting since before the Volcano first erupted. For me, this is simply the best feature and one I’ve been imagining since day 1. I made my 50th climb up KOM this morning and got a new PR. Every PR on every route I ride with the holoreplays has been smashed. Thank you!
Would love to have holo replays on my runs!
Treadmill gets so boring because usually is a solo activity (Not many races or events).
Cheers from Madrid
Are HoloReplays available to runners?