The latest Zwift update is now available on all platforms: Mac, PC, Android, iOS, and AppleTV.
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This minor update includes a fix for Tour of Watopia XP bug and a pile of Training Plans added to the on-demand workouts list. Here are the details…
Tour of Watopia XP Bug
The Tour of Watopia just began last week, and it’s hugely popular since you get double XP for all your miles. But there was a bug which caused some Zwifters to not receive double XP! Here’s the bug as described by Zwift’s Shuji in a forum post:
We’ve identified a bug that impacts double XP in Tour of Watopia events. This bug occurs when a Zwifter warms up prior to joining their Tour of Watopia event, declining the initial “join event” prompt, and later joins the event without first ending their warm-up session.
This update fixes that bug (we haven’t tested to confirm). And before you ask, Zwift has stated that “We are unable to credit accounts with additional XP”, so if this bug affected you, it appears you’re outta luck.
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Training Plans Available as On-Demand Workouts
February’s update added the three most popular Training Plans to the On-Demand Workouts list, making all the workouts in those Training Plans easily accessible at any time.
This week’s update added a pile of additional Training Plans to On-Demand. We’re seeing the following Training Plans now available as On-Demand Workouts:
- Active Offseason (folder named 12wk Winter Plan (Advanced)
- Back to Fitness
- Build Me Up (added in February)
- Crit Crusher (folder named 8wk Race Day Prep)
- Dirt Destroyer
- Fondo (folder named Zwift Fondo Bambino)
- FTP Builder (folder named 6wk Beginner FTP Builder)
- Gran Fondo (added in February)
- Gravel Grinder
- Pebble Pounder (added in February)
- Singletrack Slayer
- TT Tune-Up
- Zwift Racing
That leaves the following Training Plans not yet available as On-Demand Workouts:
- Multisport Mixer
- Zwift 101
See Wes Salmon’s notes on this update release in the Zwift forum >
A Note About Frame and Wheel Speeds
Many of you have been asking about revised frame and wheel speeds from the 1.23.0 March update, because we’ve mentioned that some items were modified, including the Chapter2 TOA whose performance after last month’s update made it the best all-arounder in game.
We’re still running tests on the fastest frames and wheels to get updated numbers. Until then, here’s how we would summarize what we’re seeing so far:
The TOA was slowed down on the flats, but so was its closest competition, the Scott Addict RC. On the climbs, the TOA stayed the same, while the Addict sped up a bit. So now the TOA has a slight advantage on the flats, but the Addict has a similar (~2 second) advantage on the climb.So far almost every one of the fast frames and wheels we’ve tested has been slowed in our flat tests by 7-9 seconds, with the notable acception of the Canyon Aeroad 2021. The interesting effect of this is that the Tron bike was only slowed by 8 seconds total, while all other bike+wheel combos will be slowed by more like 10-15 seconds. End result: the Tron is a better choice than ever, although the fastest frames with a disc wheel still beat it on flats by about 8 seconds.Whoever updated the aero settings for the fastest frames didn’t change the Zwift Aero frame, so it’s now matching speeds with the Cervelo S5 2020, Specialized Venge S-Works, Felt AR, and Uranium Nuclear. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯The new gravel wheels, which promised nice performance boosts on Yumezi’s Temple KOM, have been slowed a bit, reducing their advantage. They’re still much faster than the stock Zwift gravel wheels, though.
Overall, it appears that Zwift made numerous adjustments to equipment performance, mostly on the aero side of things, which slowed many items down by 7-9 seconds over our ~50 minute flat test. We’ve reached out to Zwift asking for details on what changed, but so far they aren’t sharing that info. So we’re left with more testing to do.
Update 3/21/2022: after further testing and a lot of digging, it’s clear Zwift did not make a lot of changes to frame or wheel performance in this update. Our timing changes were due to a temporary (and as yet unspecified) issue in our systems which has since been rectified. Ride on, friends.
Questions or Comments?
If you spotted any other changes or bugs in the update, please comment below!
Thanks for the always very informative insights Eric, much appreciated!
What a pity though that we spend our hard-earned drops on frames and wheels based on your excellent numbers, after which somebody at Zwift HQ decides to adjust parameters impacting the speed of our new toys.
I wish we could get a refund for gear we bought but no longer need after such a parameter change, or at the very minimum give us a way to organize our garage and place the stuff we no longer need in a virtual closet to hide it from the “useful” gear…
I don’t even necessarily want the drops back, I just want to get some of the no-longer-useful frames out of my garage to make swapping in races faster and easier.
I wrote to Zwift a few weeks back. Suggested they allow user to tag favourite kit in our garage to facilitate speedier swapping. Using Apple TV is a nightmare scrolling through kit I have no intention of using.
It should be very easy to implement. Stuff like that has a very limited scope and does not affect gameplay at all. So why not just let a developer code up a proper bike management. Just let the user save bikes under a user defined label for easy access.
But since even a simple home screen redesign takes years, there are probably some severe problems with how Zwift is programmed and even simple changes are not easy to fix.
Our the fact that they have a back log, and something like this is not near the top of the list.
As a developer, I don’t think it would be hard for them, but it does take time to design it (the UI and flow), takes time to write the code, change the database schema (if they’re relational), testing in house, go out and do a few non related group rides, then probably a bigger group, collect feedback, do any changes that are needed, repeat a bunch of steps, all before its released.
And I’m sure that they don’t have a huge team of developers either.
I’m all for this. Been mentioning / asking for a couple of years now for improvements in the garage to quickly find what you want
It’s a real pain to be honest. I don’t know why they feel the need to mess about with it all like this. If you weren’t aware you could be wondering why your PBs are suddenly affected negatively and put it down to yourself being off or something.
Wouldn’t worry about it. You only need to look at your own numbers (watts/hr) to be able to put it down to yourself. Bike testing for a few seconds over a 50 min flat test isn’t going to make any difference in your average Zwift race for example.
I’d love a garage organizer or sell back option.
Poor Eric, at this rate you’re going to be running full speed tests every month in order to keep things up to date! Hopefully for your sake Zwift stops making changes quite so frequently.
I wouldn’t stress too much about these changes, they are very small, very unlikely to make an actual difference. What was a good bike choice yesterday is still a good bike choice today. If following this stuff stressed you out take a break and check back in a month or so. If following this stuff is fun for you, hold on for the ride.
Eric, the Active Offseason plan appears to be the same as 12 wk Winter (advanced) in the workout list.
Maybe this is just be being overly optimistic, but how cool would it be if they’re nerfing all these bikes because they are about to add more levels and want room to make new, faster bikes for everyone to strive for but also want to give people a reason to still go for the Tron even with new options that are faster than the current frames?
I like how you think!
Waiting for Zwift Concept 2 bike at L 51 . . . .
And a Moon challenge requiring 385000 km of distance to unlock it?
Not bloody likely! It’s nice to dream, though.
8-seconds between the Z1 and… the absolute fastest frame/wheelset in the game. EIGHT. SECONDS.
Once again, reinforcement to not spend a time on anything in the drop shop.
The new Zwifter would do well to select the Climb Everest challenge, get the Emonda, keep climbing to get the Z1…and then ignore the drop shop until Level 26 for the Canyon Speedmax CF SLX disc, then again until level 42 for the highest end disc wheelset.
Unless racing it’s all a bit useless anyway. To anyone just training/exercising on Zwift it doesn’t really make much of an impact. That said it would be nice to keep consistency, I’m still trying to break the AdZ in an hour PB so I don’t want the bike I’m consistently using to suddenly be downgraded and I’m wondering why my times have dropped.
its almost as if they make broad changes to invalidate current speed results and incline the community to ride whatever brand is their favorite because there is no consistent way to know what demonstrably performs better
Getting a bit silly now, that’s twice recently I’ve spent drops to buy frames that have subsequently been nerfed. I wouldn’t mind if there was an option to sell the frame back after the changes had been made. The other issues show a poor attention to detail overall.
So as a level 23 am I best with Chapter2 or Aeroroad 2021 mainly for flat and rolling? Don’t do big climbs lol
Trek Madone.
So for now on a Crit City race, Cervelo S5 2020 with the DT Swiss is still the best option?
Or the S-Works Venge.
Thanks for all the speed testing. Massively helpful for the community, especially for racers. I imagine it is a surprise when bike/wheel setting change and you have to rerun the tests and update the various posts. I certainly appreciate it and think of all the work you do to keep the speed test results fresh.
“So far almost every one of the fast frames and wheels we’ve tested has been slowed in our flat tests by 7-9 seconds, with the notable acception of the Canyon Aeroad 2021.” – Does this mean the Canyon Aeroad is now the fastest non-tron frame?
Astute observation. It appears so. Retesting to confirm.
Great work as always Eric just curious if Zwift informs you of changes to frames / wheels or you test a few after a new update?
They don’t tell me much when it comes to changes. Sometimes they’ll allude to something being changed, but it’s never very precise. This month… nothing. I just tested a few things… and they had all changed. So I started testing more…
Now that seti@home has been finished, wouldn’t these tests be a reasonable new volunteer computing project? 😂
Oh poor Eric, I have so many questions about this : Where is the need for ZHQ to change performance numbers so often ? And if all frames are slowed down by ~8s … where is the sense ? Why don’t they tell you which things they have change this time ? I only remember that they planned to put some weight on EVERY groupset but some frames like TOA already had this and shouldn’t be changed again then.
I am a big fan of your raw data spreadsheet to be able to follow your new tests. But since Friday the table column with the new times is hidden. Is this on purpose or not ? Or did you even stop running tests ? Thanks in advance.
Ah, thanks Eric for your updated comment from 21.03.22 that your test system had some trouble in the last days. This can happen. So, the TOA is still top dog with 3&1sec faster than the Addict ? And TOA+7.8 can still be compared to the Tron with 8s slower on flats but 8s faster on AdZ ?
Thanks again for everything you do for our big indoor-community.
Correct. Nothing changed from last month on these bikes.
Puuh, sounds good Eric. Are there any other important or notable changes at the best frames/wheels like Aeroad21, Venge, Swiss Disc and so on ? Or only some minor changes at the “slower equipment” ?
Nothing notable that I’ve seen. Just the new items added to the Drop Shop.
Do you get the feeling that Zwift just has a culture problem related to attention to detail? The amount of bugs, inconsistent gear adjustments, and inability to properly report route distances/elevation in events would make you think so.
yeah, it feels like a cluster goin on over there
thanks for the info! I’m having a problem where none of the new gravel wheels are showing up in my drop shop. Do anyone know how to maybe fix that or should I contact zwift support
They are there – you just have to be on a gravel bike before they’ll show up.
Thanks!
you have to equip a gravel bike first, they you will see the gravel wheels in the drop shop
Hi you need to have a gravel bike selected before the gravel wheels will show in the drop shop.
You know, with all this nerfing of frames and wheels and groupset bugs and God only knows what else, I think I’m switching back to the Tron and just staying there. It’s really the only bike with any real performance consistency. Zwift really needs to get its act together! At this point I’m starting to question the accuracy of everything, data included.
It has made me wonder about the viability of virtual cycling on the world stage (like UCI World Championships). If the performance of various equipment can be so easily manipulated, it puts results in question.
In game equipment is neutralized for the regulated races.
Still treating the fast flat/rolling frames based on climbing times so even thou aero is equal that should be the decider.
The Tron has changed looks in this update. Highligted frame in stead of highlighted wheels!
Didn’t they show prototypes of their in real life trainer looking like the old tron? Did they change the design of that and changed the in-game to match?
Never saw the old Tron, so I dunno, but it’s back to normal.
old Tron = current tron
And now it’s back to normal…
I think what your seeing is actually a bug – that’s the Tron glowy wheel bug. It happens to me on AppleTV a lot. Restart and it’s back to normal colors.
One day all aero frames will be equal, and then the different frames are just cosmetics. But not this day.
I don’t know how they did it, but the folks at Zwift seem to have updated the parameters on my IRL Domane. I went out after work today and was easily 2.5mph faster than in the fall. At a lower ave HR. But oddly my average power was up?
I’m sure it has nothing to do with all those Zwift miles on (sometimes nerfed) virtual bikes.
Winning comment.
Every Zwifter comes here to learn about the latest updates. Thanks for the grand work guys & dolls 💪🏿😁
Eric,
So what your saying is that the bikeswap option for the road to ruins (https://zwiftinsider.com/road-to-ruins-recommendation/) is even more of an option and that the time gap between aero vs gravel only is more or less no existing.
Is that a correct assessment? Its kind of important for the ZRL Season 3 Race 1.
Yes – with the new gravel wheels, bike swapping on that route is even more appealing. It’s going to be interesting to see what people do for race 1.
Really pleased to have got the new Home Page UI after this update … although interestingly the new UI wasn’t there the first or second time I opened after completing the update, but was the third time.
Could be that actually it wasn’t this update that activated it, but liking it so far nonetheless.
It wasn’t the update. The new UI is being released on a per-account basis using a feature flag Zwift can toggle on/off whenever they’d like. LOTS of Windows users getting the new UI this week!
I’d love it for Zwift to revamp their frame and wheel ratings. Make it out of ten with decimal points so we aren’t all reliant on Eric’s latest speed tests (btw thank you Eric) and keep them static! When they release newer models they can make the stats slightly better and available at higher levels.
I love that gamification side that the frame/wheels bring, but it’s a big turnoff that it’s a constantly moving target. Zwift should spend some resources figuring this out. It’s really not rocket science, thousands of other video games have equipment libraries in place already.
This frame performance dance is super-annoying. Luckily as a L20 I have an Aeroad in the garage, the DT Swiss wheels and 808s. I’ll likely skip the drop shop until I can get the Tron. Just wish the Aeroad was better looking!
Yeah it’s a pain – I have stuck with my Evo for climbs and use the Madone for everything else. I’m into the last 10k for the Tron now and like you say will pretty much stick with that going forward except for pure climbing.
Yes, I got the TOA frame because they said it was possibly a Tron beater, but seems slower to me on the flats than the Addict RC, struggled more in a group. So back to the Tron it is…
I don’t blame people for being annoyed about frame/wheel attributes being changed on a whim (I was initially pissed as well when I found out in November my newly purchased Aeroad 2021 was bogged down by the DuraAce weight bug, which is now thankfully gone). But I also understand when the TOA needed some restraint, purely for game balancing needs. Why buy the Addict (which is apparently a long-time favorite all-rounder choice) when you could get the TOA earlier and cheaper, and it performed better? It had to be done to some degree.
But figuring the nerf was coming, I bought the TOA anyway. At a newly earned lvl 18 this week, my prior two main rigs were the Aeroad and the Cannondale Evo, both with the DT Swiss wheels. As one who likes to climb, I figured that the TOA could be as good as the Evo for that purpose, along with being more aero for the flats/rollers. I tried it for the first time on the Downtown Titans route this morning, and found it suited me fairly well. At 6’3″ and 185 lbs, I’m not winning any ascents, but the light frame seemed to help on the climbs on that route, and I might have had to work a little harder to stay in a pack on the downs and flats, but I can thankfully generate enough power to do so. I tried the Aeroad for the first two stages of the ToW and got dropped after 20-30 minutes both times, so I think I’ll still experiment with the TOA for now.
I believe R1.23 defaulted to the route that was ridden. This appears to have reverted back to just defaulting to the area instead of the route.
Ah! This explains why I received no XP at all (forget double, I had none whatsoever) when I ran stage 2 after a warmup and switched over to join event without ending the warm up session first. Bummer about not getting the credit back though. In the end after 2km with no points, I decide to end the event and then re-log in. What was neat was that I was at least spawned into the event at the 2km mark where I had left off. I didn’t get the points from before but got the ones after, and they were 2x.
I came here today cuz I swear.. unless my eyes are deceiving me… that Zwift upped the graphics rendering on my Macpro (monterey) today. I think it looks amazing. Am I the only one who got this memo? Was it a gift from the Zwift Gods?
The cameras move now too between the different views like there’s a steadicam. Amazing.
Has there been an unusual number of updates against this release? Seems to have been at least three including initial release.
Not sure what the workaround is on trying to ride on schedule, bar logging on, one hour before scheduled ride? Good thing ToW is on repeat every hour 😁
Zwift often issues one minor update after the month’s major update. This month they’ve put out TWO minor updates, so a bit more than usual.
My computer updated to 1.23.2 right before my TOW Stage 3 ride today of Road to Sky. Nothing I have done today has been sent to my Strava. I have not had an issue with that before. Any one else have this problem?
I’m trying to create a customer run, but it seems with the 1.23.2 update I am not able to on the PC.
Could it be that there is a new Pinarello TT frame, too?
Anybody else having massive skyscrapers of graphics or wierd shadows (I’m blacked out in the shade but I’m not below a cloud…) with the latest update?
Wierd shadows….