Zwift Update Version 1.48 (120544) Released

The latest Zwift update has been announced and will be released in phases over the next few days.

This release has no new features: just a lot of bug fixes and some quality-of-life tweaks. Read on for details!

Zwift Play Connectivity Improvements

Zwift’s release notes for today’s update include four entries related to Zwift Play controller connectivity:

1. Fixed an issue with Zwift Play that could occur when reconnecting the device.
2. Improvements to controller connection reliability
3. Fixed an issue where Ride-On Bombs or braking may not work properly if the controllers lost connection to the game and then reconnected
4. Fixed an issue where braking would still have haptic feedback (i.e. controller vibrations) when haptic feedback was disabled in settings

Zwift is clearly devoting significant developer and hardware QA time to improving Play connectivity, and that’s great news because consistent performance is needed if Zwift Play is to be embraced by the everyday Zwifter. In the past several weeks, we’ve experienced (and reported to Zwift) erratic Play connections at various times:

• moving between events and free rides
• starting a fresh Apple TV activity
• changing from built-in Bluetooth to Companion connections when Zwifting with a PC
• and sometimes, one controller would disconnect mid-ride!

Hopefully this update fixes all or most of these niggles. We’ll know soon enough!

Fix for Garmin Connect Users

Zwift’s release notes include this blurb:

Fixed an issue where activity progress (i.e. FIT files) could become corrupted after quickly skipping Workout intervals, resulting in Zwift getting stuck on the Save screen and inability to upload affected FIT files to Garmin Connect

Zwifters have been reporting problems with uploading workouts to Garmin Connect for some time now. The cause of the issue (when quickly skipping intervals in a workout, Zwift doesn’t write timestamps to the lap data) was surfaced by Shane Miller (GPLama) quite a while ago, so it’s good to see the fix making into the game. Good on ya, Shane!

Zwift Racing Score Taken Offline

This isn’t technically a part of today’s game update, since the changes are all handled on the server side. But it’s worth mentioning that yesterday Zwift announced that Zwift Racing Score was being temporarily disabled “while we work on improvements to the overall scoring mechanism, which is currently in development and targeting a release in the coming months, though we don’t have concrete details for you yet.”

Readers may recall that Zwift Racing Score was soft-launched back in late June. You may also recall that some members of Zwift’s racing community were, shall we say, “less than impressed” by how Zwift chose to handle the scoring.

We can’t share any details due to NDA, but from what we’re hearing internally, Zwift’s revamped scoring mechanism should be a big improvement over the first iteration. Zwift clearly heard the community’s feedback, and they appear to be trying to deliver a Scoring mechanism that is in step with the high standards set by other community projects such as zwiftracing.app.

When will the new scoring scheme roll out? Zwift’s just-released This Season on Zwift plans state that Zwift Racing Score is launching in late November.

More Release Notes

Here are additional notes provided by Zwift on the tweaks and bug fixes included in this update, with additions from us in italics:

• Kickr Bike: You must now press and hold the U-Turn button (i.e. the Right Minus button) before a U-Turn is initiated. No more accidental U-Turns. Hurray!
• Fixed an issue that could occur when trying to access Climb Portal after switching worlds via joining or completing an event between France and Watopia
• Fixed an issue which caused some Custom Workouts to not sync across multiple devices
• Fixed an issue where activity progress (i.e. FIT file) would not include progress made after resuming an interrupted activity after a game crash
• Zwift Play: Reduced the amount of time required to hold the Z-Button before giving a Ride-On Bomb. Hurray for easier Mega Ride On Bombs!
• Zwift Play: Reduced the amount of time required to hold the D-Pad Down button before initiating a U-Turn
• Zwift Hub: Fixed an issue which could cause some text to unexpectedly appear in the in-game HUD after closing the Settings screen
• Elite Rizer: Fixed an issue which caused steering to not work. This should fix what the previous update broke.
• Climb Portal: Average power shown at the end of the climb now only includes watts generated while in the Climb Portal and not before entering the portal. Thank heavens, this one had been bugging us since the Portal launched!
• Climb Portal: Fixed an issue where Emotes could not be heard by nearby users. I’m toast!
• Fixed an issue in the France Ven-Top route where previous route time was shown as blank in the in-game HUD
• Improved elevation tracking in London and Richmond worlds. At long last – the elevation counter moves in 1-foot increments instead of changing every ~6 feet!
• iOS:
  • Fixed an issue that could cause crashes when navigating through game menus.
  • General improvements to game memory usage. Lots of iPad users complained of Zwift locking up after the previous update. Hopefully this helps!
• PC:
  • Intel Arc A77M GPUs now have the Ultra graphics profile enabled. A mobile GPU from Intel running in Ultra? Laptop lovers rejoice!
  • Fixed a crash that could occur if a game asset wasn’t loaded correctly.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when navigating through the Badges screen via keyboard or Zwift Play controllers.

See and discuss release notes in the Zwift forum >

Questions or Comments?

If you spotted any other changes or bugs in the update, please comment below!