Zwift Update Version 1.81 (137932) Released

Zwift version 1.81 begins its phased rollout today. While not a major release, it includes some new route badges, including nods to upcoming new routes, plus increased speeds for three Shimano road wheelsets. Let’s dive into the details!

New Badges

Zwift’s update note says, “Badges are now available for seven previously event-only routes and are now available to free ride.” To be clear, five of the seven routes Zwift lists already had achievement badges in game – but they were event-only routes, meaning you couldn’t free ride them:

• Queen’s Highway After Party (Yorkshire)
• Petite Douleur (France)
• Outer Scotland (Scotland)
• London Flat (London)
• Shisa Shakedown (Makuri Islands)

Those five routes become free ridable in today’s update, while two other routes get badges for the first time and also become open routes:

• The Magnificent 8 (Watopia)
• NYC KOM After Party (New York)

Upcoming New Routes

Not mentioned in Zwift’s update notes are badges for five as-yet-unannounced new routes which were added to the achievement list in this update:

• ZG25 Queen (Watopia)
• Downtown Eruption (Watopia)
• London Uprising (London)
• Scotland Smash (Scotland)
• Makuri Madness (Makuri Islands)

Our guess is that these routes will be used for the upcoming Zwift Games races. We’ll publish dedicated posts for each of these routes once we have more details.

Faster Wheels

Today’s update notes say, “Improved the aerodynamic performance of the Shimano C40, C50, and C60 wheelsets.”

Shimano’s wheelsets have long shown lackluster performance in Zwift (see our wheel performance charts for details). In fact, they rank 35th, 36th, and 37th out of 40 wheelsets in our stacked percentile rankings!

Watch for a separate post detailing the updated performance metrics for Shimano’s in-game wheelsets.

Windows PC + AMD App Freeze Fix

Zwifters using Windows with AMD graphics cards have been reporting app freezes more frequently in recent weeks. Zwift released version 1.81.2 quickly following the 1.81.0 release which supposedly resolves this problem.

Read more on the forum >

More Release Notes

Zwift provided notes on additional tweaks and bug fixes in this update:

• All Platforms
  • Fixed an issue that could cause the Screen Shake Effect setting to not persist between sessions.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause the Weekly Time Goal banner to not appear on some platforms.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause the lap counter to overlap with the event route progress bar in some languages.
  • Fixed an issue where Zwift Play and Zwift Click could inherit an unsupported shifting style when Zwift Ride was used previously.
  • Fixed unexpected bumps in the roadway that could occur in certain locations in Watopia.
  • Fixed an invisible section of road surface on the Rooftop Rendezvous route in Makuri Islands.
• Mac
  • Fixed an issue that could cause the Weekly Time Goal banner to appear prematurely.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause the number of event participants to not be shown on the main home screen banner.
• Windows
  • Fixed a crash that could occur on launch.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause the number of event participants to not be shown on the main home screen banner.
• Android
  • A warning message is now shown if your device has insufficient storage space to run Zwift.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause Zwift to appear to be temporarily stuck on the loading screen after an update.
• iOS, Apple TV
  • Fixed an issue that could cause a crash after logging in.

Discuss this update in Zwift’s forum >

Questions or Comments?

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