Zwift recently published their “This Season On Zwift” (TSOZ) press release summarizing plans for new Zwift features through the end of 2022. And while that press release gives some high-level details of upcoming features, we like to dig a little deeper here at Zwift Insider.
This is one in a series of individual posts discussing specific upcoming features in more depth.
Race Your Past Efforts
This may be the most exciting feature in Zwift’s TSOZ announcement, so it’s where we’ll begin.
Launching as a FutureWorks feature, Holographic Replays are the first iteration of a feature Zwifters have long requested: the ability to ride against your past efforts.
The main settings window will give you the option of showing:
- a hologram of your most recent effort on a segment
- a hologram of your best effort (90 day PR) on that segment
- no hologram replay at all
This is how it looks in game:
Notice how your hologram shows as an entry in the rider list and includes your PR time and the segment name.
Replayable Segments
At launch this feature will only be available on segments that include a leaderboard: all timed KQOMs (including Alpe du Zwift!), sprints, and these full routes:
- 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
- Yorkshire: 2019 UCI Worlds Harrogate Circuit
Your hologram is not draftable, and it is only visible to you. Holographic replays will only be available during free rides, including Pace Partner groups.
Actual 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 Holographic Replays avoids this by actually replaying your previous activity based on saved activity data which even includes 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.
If you blew up at turn 4 on your previous Alpe du Zwift attempt, your hologram will do the same. Knowing this, you can pace yourself a bit behind your hologram until turn 4, where you will (hopefully) have the legs to overtake your previous self and set a new personal best.
Here’s another video showing a FutureWorks Holographic Replays on Richmond’s 2015 UCI Worlds Course:
This ability to race yourself sets up fun training scenarios. Two examples:
- Hill repeats on a particular KQOM, trying for negative splits (going faster on each subsequent attempt)
- Sprint training on a particular sprint segment, figuring out how to optimize your entry speed and powerup usage for the fastest possible time.
Release Date
Zwift isn’t giving any official release date for FutureWorks Holographic Replays, but we know it’s slated for release by the end of the year since it was included in TSOZ.
Based on what we’re hearing from inside ZwiftHQ (employees have been testing and raving about the new feature for weeks), we’re guessing this will be released in September or October.
Just The Beginning
FutureWorks Holographic Replays are launching with solid functionality that will be welcomed by all Zwifters. But what else could be done with Holographic Replays? We have a few ideas:
- Include the ability to race your lifetime PR, not just 90-day
- Be able to race against some else’s hologram. What if a pro rode a particular route solo, then Zwifters as a group could race that pro’s hologram in an event? What if you could race your friend’s hologram?
- Have personal holograms available for all routes, not just those tracked on a leaderboard
We’re confident that Zwift will build out the feature set of FutureWorks Holographic Replays as time goes on like they’ve done 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.
Questions or Comments?
Share below!
Interesting… but will it not be heavily dependent upon how big the pack you rode in was, unless you deliberately try to ride solo? My best segment times are all in ZRL races and I’ll never come anywhere close to them in any other situation (AdZ perhaps excepted).
Yep, I thought the same.
I know Zwift employees seem to be enjoying just racing their previous effort – doing hill repeats and such. I do wonder if Zwift will need to differentiate between race PRs and PRs set in free rides. Who knows? That’s why it’s FutureWorks, I suppose.
Not any different than PRs on Strava, right?
yep! i can see a lot of potential with this. so glad its being added soon
I get what you are saying, but really PRs in races with drafting, tactics, group size, etc isn’t really a PR is it? For me its not… to many variables in a race. I see this as more of a training/assessment aid.
I was thinking this would work better if we had separate segment times for TT bikes, but with the ZRL TTT changes kinda screw that one over as well.
Agree with lifetime PR suggestion. I’d suggest that for the PR leadboard in general – instead of just last 90 days, how about all-time PR at the top, followed by rest of 90 day PRs.The expansion from 60-90 is good, but for us old guys, personal PRs are likely to be further in the past.
Agreed, it’s pretty rare that I even do the same segment more than once in 30 days as an actual effort.
*90
Rather than sprints, the place I see this working most effectively for me is optimizing my strategy on climbs. When (and how much) did I ease off the power as the climb got shallower? Did that leave me more energy that I could pound the steep stuff harder? Right now, all my efforts toward my Zwift Power FTP (and this has been true for some time) have come on one of the Innsbruck or Epic KoM climbs (almost added Bologna to that list, but I’ve started sneaking in under 20 minutes there). Chasing myself would let me work on making… Read more »
about time! I love love love this!
Wouldn’t everyone’s best segments be during races with drafting though?
Next up: Allowing us to draft off our previous-performance holograms.
(After that: Allowing the holograms to draft US.)
(After that, it’s turtles ALL THE WAY DOWN.)
Seems like the easiest solution instead of splitting PR’s by races and non races is to make your Hologram draftable. If you crush it in a race then you can kinda replicate it by following yourself on the next climb. Love where they are going with this though!
The solution is actually just a data one. Zwift would need to apply the draft effect your ghost was receiving at each part of the segment, route, instead of the draft effect your were actively receiving. If that data is stored by Zwift.
90 day PR?! Disappointing. Makes it almost useless for me. Zwift is seasonal for me and so are the PRs. Why not make it so we can select any previous activity from the selected route. Are the activities not stored at the required resolution for this?
This would be great for Bologna!
Hope it will work here as well. (I believe there is a leaderboard?)
My first thought as well – Bologna is where I measure my progress. But Bologna is an event-only world, so if it doesn’t work in events……
What about the ability of setting a time for a segment or climb? Like 1h for the Alp.
This sounds very positive, I hope the final polish on release allows this feature to really shine.
As they said it could actually be better than Strava Live segments which I gave up on for the reasons stated above.
If Zwift includes BOTH 90day PR and All time PR that would be great.
Also if we can choose to exclude race, pace partner, and events from our PBs then that would help to make riding solo with your Ghost rider more relevant.
One issue that may crop up with all time PBs is technical: Zwift is saving the position for each segment and replaying it back to you, which is something they likely wouldn’t have recorded previously. A PB from 2 years ago would likely just have the final time and not record precise location data. With 90 day PB they can just start recording now and won’t have an issue. Though I’d be happy to just have a simulated PB ghost for all records prior to now, but I suspect that they don’t want to go through the hassle of implementing… Read more »
Possibly, but an “all-time” PB from as far back as they have the data at least, especially for rides like the Alpe as I certainly don’t smash a new PB every 90 days on that, but I want to see if I can get back to me best and beat it.
It would be cool to have the ability to choose to race against people you follow or even better a specific clubs other riders. I think a Strava like Kom for everyone would be useless with the potential for cheating. But seeing if you can beat your club would be fun
Racermate offered the previous performance plus other paces in, admittedly, a much less crowded environment and that was great! I’m stoked to read of this. Would it be possible to have a ‘personal pace partner’? I mean, say, a pacer the same height and weight as mine at a w/kg that I specify. That way I wouldn’t have to crawl up hills only to sprint down.
Will I have any hope of getting this feature to work using the ATV interface. Dear God, make it stop!
A similar multi-ghost function to Rouvy would be great. Not only your time for a route but *all* rider’s times. You can then pick your time but maybe also someone a little quicker too and chase them down. Up to 3 ghosts total. I used to ride against one just a bit slower, one a little faster and the 3rd as someone at ‘stretch goal’ pace if I was feling strong.
I’m sure such an ability would add significant additional code and load to the system. I’ll start grateful with a single ghost 🙂
for flat sprints/routes its gunna suck to see that your PR was set in a race with relatively low w/kg and then try to beat it haha… ill probably only care about them for climbs
I just rode Richmond fan flats in the hope of doing circuits (I was a bit dissapointed)…I only got hologram for the 15 second sprint…
Are there any short circuits on zwift that are a segments so I can have my pacer on constantly???
I’ve been wanting this feature for years. It’s better than I could ever have imagined. Volcano, Box hill,London loop,Tempus ,mountain,Paris – all PRs smashed. Been using since before the volcano .I’m blown away.