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
- Downtown Eruption
- London Uprising
- Scotland Smash
- Makuri Madness
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.
More Release Notes
Zwift provided notes on additional tweaks and bug fixes in this update:
Discuss this update in Zwift’s forum >
Questions or Comments?
If you spotted any other changes or bugs in the update, please comment below!
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