Zwift version 1.95 begins its phased rollout today. This is a fairly minor update, but there are several notable game changes included. Read on for details…
iOS M-series Improvements
Zwift says this release includes “Various visual improvements for M-series iPads, iPhone 16, and iPhone 16 Pro.” To be more precise, this update includes just minor UI tweaks for iPhone 16. M-series iPads, on the other hand, get actual game resolution upgrades:
- All M series iPads will now have improved bike and rider shadows
- All M3 iPads will have the above and higher color and shadow resolution
- All M4 iPads will have the above and even higher shadow resolution
Zwift says, “Additionally, we will continue to share other opportunities to further improve graphics on M series iPads and will share further updates once available.”
Event Cooldowns for All
Zwift began testing an “Event Cooldown” feature in late June. It’s a simple idea: instead of returning riders to the open world as soon as they finish their event, let them continue riding with fellow event participants for 10 minutes. This gives riders the chance to chat with each other and cool down before moving on with their next activity.
During the cooldown you can also see riders’ finishing positions pinned to their backs, and you can click to bring up the results screen.
Zwift says, “Event Cool Down will be turned on for all events. This will also take effect for earlier game versions.” And while the finishing positions feature had been temporarily disabled a few weeks ago due to a bug, Zwift says everything is fixed in this update, and finishing positions will be visible once again during the cooldowns.
Join a Friend In-Game Notifications
Zwift says, “Looking for a friendly wheel to join? Zwifters will now receive a notification when a mutually following friend starts Zwifting in the same world. Simply use the Teleport feature to join them.”
You probably already know that you can click from the “Join a Zwifter” card on the homescreen to join any friends you follow (who also follow you) who are actively Zwifting:
And you probably know that, while you’re actively Zwifting (but not in an event or workout) you can teleport to a friend who is riding in the same world as you.
This update adds a notification to the top-center HUD element informing you when a friend starts Zwifting in the same world. You can then use the teleport feature to easily join them if you’d like. Here’s what that notification looks like:
I think this is a good feature to encourage the community feel of Zwift, but there are a few issues:
- When you first begin Zwifting, the feature brings up alerts for every friend who is already Zwifting in that world. That’s a lot of notifications if you have a lot of friends! I expected the feature to only show a notification if a friend started Zwifting after I started Zwifting. If Zwift wants to notify me of all the riders I could teleport to when I begin my ride, perhaps a simple “summary notification” could come up that says something like “23 friends are Zwifting in Watopia, use Teleport to join…”
- The alerts come up when you are riding a workout. This doesn’t seem helpful, as you can’t teleport during a workout. Plus, if you are in a workout, chances are very good you’re not interested in teleporting to a friend anyway!
Blocking Bike Upgrade Gamers
Zwift says, “We made some improvements to ensure that bike upgrades are unlocked via genuine efforts.”
This is an interesting one.
Ever since Zwift launched their Bike Upgrades feature in March, a small, squirrelly subset of Zwifters has been gaming the system by teleporting to riders perched atop big descents. The Zwifter could then easily coast downhill, accumulating time or distance towards their next bike upgrade. Wash, rinse, repeat… long, continuous descents like Ventoux or Alpe du Zwift let you accumulate distance or time quickly, with zero effort.
Zwift is being vague about the precise measures put in place to “ensure that bike upgrades are unlocked via genuine efforts.” However, I’m doing a bit of testing today, and will write a separate post with the results. Because that’s the Insider way!
(Before anyone asks: Zwift has told me that they don’t plan to retroactively apply these rules… that is, to somehow claw back bike upgrades people may have earned through less than genuine efforts. This only applies moving forward.)
Michael Lander Memorial
In a nice touch that Zwift isn’t announcing publicly, some memorial road art has been added to Sector 6 (aka Dutch corner) on Alpe du Zwift, honoring Michael Lander, a well-loved member of the BMTR community who we lost earlier this year.
Release Notes
Zwift provided notes on additional tweaks and bug fixes in this update:
- Windows: The Ultra graphics profile is now enabled for the following graphics cards: AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT, Intel Arc 140V.
Discuss this update in Zwift’s forum >
Questions or Comments?
If you spotted any other changes or bugs in the update, please comment below!
Are they ever going to release the 9 courses that are event only? Event courses are dumb. They should just make all the courses available and every course gets a badge. Further, get rid of the running badge being included in the total.
Yes to everything here, especially the running badge bit.
It’s great news that zwift are stopping the cheaters upgrading bikes but… They must roll back upgrades that were gotten using these cheating methods and make them work for it like the rest of us so it’s an equal playing field for all.
I believe I’ve also noticed an increasing number of “ghost” riders, usually using Zpower who have cracked up hundreds of KMS on their ride and whizzing along at 5+ w/kg perfectly steady rate, zero variation. Likely someone just strapping a cadence sensor on a power drill, but we don’t have capability to flag these users.
yeah, there’s this korean dude, who’s riding over 700km at over 4wpk – currently he’s on a specialized halo bike – how often he’s doing this im not sure, but ive seen him a number of times.
I would wholeheartedly support Zwift doing this. But I don’t think they will.
I sadly suspect you are correct though but that does tend to say that cheating is ok.
They probably don’t want to deal with the headache of potential false positives.
It looks like a great update, and there are some nice changes to the game lately. About this comment, I chuckled a bit:
“Ever since Zwift launched their Bike Upgrades feature in March, a small, squirrelly subset of Zwifters has been gaming the system by teleporting to riders perched atop big descents. The Zwifter could then easily coast downhill, accumulating time or distance towards their next bike upgrade. Wash, rinse, repeat… long, continuous descents like Ventoux or Alpe du Zwift let you accumulate distance or time quickly, with zero effort.”
I have 3169 Zwift followers as of this post, and I have seen at least 300 of my unique followers exploiting this since March while I was doing workouts (I almost always pick Ventop or a variant), teleporting to me and descending. People don’t even have to be “perched” or plan it. It seems like Zwifters were just entering the area, and using the teleporting feature to their nearby connections, and taking what they could get.
I never got too upset about it since it’s just a game, but I know how long it has taken to unlock each Halo bike without doing this – about 120 hours of Zwifting per bike (for me) at a pace that’s neither killing myself, nor too easy.
I did notice, though, that among the Zwifters who were most frequently using this exploit, upon publishing their recent activities, they typically have them set to “Only Me”, so it looks like the last time they Zwifted was before approximately March.
I think Eric Min once put it best: what’s the point of unlocking something if you didn’t put forth the effort. (I am paraphrasing).
They stopped making Game Genie almost three decades ago. I am curious to see how these fixes roll out to be and that they have no negative impacts to Zwifters making legitimate upgrade efforts.
Case in point, once I finished Bon Voyage, and teleported to a Zwifter friend of mine who was having a miserable slog up Ventop and was considering quitting. He was about halfway up, so I joined him and we finished it together. I rode that descent with him, even though I didn’t do the first half of the climb.
What has become a bit silly with the upgrades now is not just the Alpe technique that was mentioned, but also the people who rack up miles simply by rejoining the pace partners (usually one of the faster ones like Constance), over and over and over and over again, sometimes hundreds of times in a session, racking up lots of distance from zero effort while letting the initial join timeout expire. Some of these people are infamous at this point with their usernames well recognized by others because they do it so frequently. There are also lots of clear ‘bots’ riding with the pace partners who hold unreasonable paces (e.g., 4.5 wkg or so) for incredible distances (some have gotten quite clever at varying the power reported by their bot within some range, like 4.2 – 4.7 for example, to try to make it look more ‘human’). We hear MANY people saying they constantly report these individuals and bots, but so far it doesn’t seem like Zwift has really made any effort to discourage it at all.
Zwift had no interest in stopping cheats in races, so cheaters in free rides have zero chance of repercussions.
Yesterday I found a guy at 4.0-4.2 w/kg with 80+ kms at fuego flats.
I guess that’s what happens when you put grindy stuff in the game (such as the socks, the last achievement, the bike upgrades…). I ride on zwift quite a lot and Im still on lvl2 on P74. I can imagine how other riders that don’t invest as much time, look for shortcuts.
“Event Cooldown” I think that’s an excellent idea. Am I the only one to pick up my jersey after the race?
This makes the end of the event much less disruptive to the open world where people pop-in just to stop and exit the game.
This might encourage more people to round up to the start of the next km/mile to not waste accumulated fractional distance. Perhaps more folks will finish up the route if it’s just 10 minutes away. More distance is more fitness, so that looks like a positive outcome.
Upgrading bikes by doing 10 km teleports — these guys just sit there, not pedaling, and teleport every 10–15 minutes to get an upgrade. Honestly, some people really have nothing better to do with their day.
Hollow souls
I wonder how many of them use an eBike to pull off that stunt?
No surprise that Rachael Elliott is rolling a casual 4.3 w/kg in your teleport selection screenshot.
None at all. She’s a beast!
One thing that was a bit of a shock and took me some time to figure out was the ZRace that finished at the Petit KOM made me go up the Ventoux after the race and there was no U Turn available.
Had to leave the event cooldown first before I could UTurn.
Yeah, same happened to me. That’s a cruel way to route riders after we destroy ourselves up the Petit KOM!
On jan 2 2004 you posted about having a friend park up on a climb and racking up stats for everesting I’m sure the method that people used to upgrade bikes free of effort is the same?
Huh? No idea what you’re referring to. 2004…?
“they don’t plan to retroactively apply these rules” – “Ty guys for gaming this, it’s not a cool thing to do and as a bonus we will let you have it that way and force others to do it the proper way (more time/more kms) and so we give you an advantage for gaming it”
As someone who feels the need to earn it the honest way: why would I care how others got their upgrades and ESPECIALLY that it is now harder to abuse the system?
While I’m grateful they FINALLY did something about it, for me personally the update doesn’t change one bit of the process.
Look forward to seeing what you make of the “blocking bike upgraders” algorithm Eric, but if ever there was a case of locking the door after the horse has bolted, this has to be it 🤣😂
Yup. This took way too long for Zwift to stop, IMO.
Thank-you @Eric Schlange for featuring the memorial road art now in Zwift in Michael Lander’s honour. He was a great ride leader, sweep, and cycling friend to many, and he is deeply missed 💙🚴🏻
Beautiful tribute for a wonderful man ❤️
Any news about the 4 new badges? Can
t wait to ride them...they already appear on "Whats on zwift”, but neither planned events nor other informationI believe they’re going to be used for events in the next month or two… I’m getting a bit more info about them today, though, so I’ll publish route detail pages ASAP! (Gotta make some Strava segments, too…)
I commented a bit ago that the routes are in Companion now, if it helps you to set things up. They’re pretty short and sweet.
It seems that since downloading the newest update that the resistance levels have increased over the same courses I ride fairly frequently. Has that been programmed or am I having issues with the bike/app interface??
Are you saying an incline of 1% for example is now showing something bigger? Or is it just feeling a lot tougher since you updated? If so you probably just need to calibrate your trainer. Also check the Trainer Difficulty in the game’s settings to see if it changed. The default setting is 50%.
Guys who thought their race was a Zwift race where, as long as you pay the fee cheating is okay.
https://road.cc/content/news/bizarre-cheating-scandal-cyclists-disqualified-315287
Its too bad they wont claw back illegitimate upgrades. I remember when i was doing ventoux to upgrade one of my bikes and on my descent i noticed a guy managed to have 80km done after roughly an hour with no elevation gained. So clearly cheating. Was extra sad that they had a racing team in their name. Almost wanted to find that team and let them know their teammates are gaming the system. I still have the screenshot somewhere….
Hopefully Zwift doesn’t consider swapping bikes for long descents as cheating…. I mean, I worked for it getting to the top.
After completing a climb portal, the Ven-Top or Road to Sky I simply swap my Aethos for any other bike that doesn’t require altitude gains for upgrades. Optimizing your workload, I say.
You will still gain progress towards your upgrades if you switch bikes.
Totally agree. This is part of “gaming the game” that is legit to me. Now, I still pedal +/- 2W/kg down the hill(s) cuz I’m a nutter, but that is a separate subject.
When will Zwift Academy be announced (if at all)?
I posted this last week: Zwift Academy will return in 2026 and work is already underway to make sure the 10th edition is the best yet. For Zwifters seeking great training, but not looking for a pro contract, we recommend signing up for Zwift Camp which returns this fall.
In a reply to a Facebook post, fair enough that not everyone has seen it.
Will we be getting Route Based Workouts using the recently added routes in either of these?
Sorry Tom, I wasn’t being narky, it was more that I used the same text. The new routes will be used, but I’m unsure on the workout type.
It’s actually quite hard to find another Zwifter and it can’t be done on the companion app. It should be obvious on both.
Damn… how am I only hearing about this cheat now #toolate, unless I turn off auto update LOL
You snooze you lose, Mike. 😜
How about improving the drafting, gradient and ride profile graphics? Put an optional large profile on the bottom of the screen, where the optional power profile goes.
Now when I exit Zwift on my PC (Win 10), the program shuts down as per usual, but now the app stays active with the icon still in the taskbar. I now have to right click the icon and select exit.
Never had this occur prior to this update.
I haven’t been on Zwift a long as some… But “Long Enough”
“AND” this is the First I have heard about being able to be
Teleported to another location? I knew you could go between
Bots…But to places like the Top of Alpe du Zwift???
It’s not to a place, it’s to a follower who is sitting on the top of the climb. Some of the clubs had riders parked there for hours upon hours (my guess was a free 25k account for some) and all their other riders were gaining “experience” on downhill coasting
As a Dutch person, I am honored that Zwift chose to honor Michael Lander on the Dutch corner.
Condolences to his family and BMTR.
I can confirm it’s a very nice graphic upgrade on a iPad Pro M4, the shadows going from being grey blobs under the bikes to a proper detailed shadow. While it’s by no means a game changing upgrade, it’s nice to see the M4 chip being utilised well.
I use an iPad Pro 4th gen with an M2 chip. Since the upgrade, I have seen no bike/rider shadows. Did these only apply to M3/M4 chips?
Do we have a update that support more then 30FPS ?
i mean we talk 2025 and swift are running 30fps on taplet and 60fps on apple tv and pc.
120hz wil be nice ”only a dream”
In this or ealier releases we can adjust our hud. What is weighted power, how is it calculated and how does it differ from the well known average power?
The event cool down is another example of.an “improvement” no one asked for. Now its not possible, for the first 10 min after the ride ends, to teleport to another rider who was in the same ride (or in another ride) unless everyone leaves the ride… This feature should be optional, and left to the ride managers to activate it or not.
I would also challenge the idea that after parties (riders that willingly continue to ride together after the ride ends), needed an intervention of Zwift HQ control freaks to regulate and limit them…
I really enjoy the cycling portion of Zwift but, I hope the outdoor running connection with Garmin happens soon. Or at least have the running count as part of my fitness time.