embankmentlb

I am new to the Wahoo Core. About 3 rides in. Road with the RGT app on a mountain corse and it was brutal. Requiring all I had at times with a 39-27 easy gear.
Zwift seems to scale back the resistance by 50% so I never got out of the big ring while climbing.
I am still trying to understand all this.
What gearing do you use with your setup?

sarhog

Zwift doesn’t scale back resistance per say. This article does a good job explaining what “trainer realism” is on Zwift.

Zwift Insider article

spelger

sure it does. when set to 50% then all hills are only half as steep by default. so a 1% grade that is visible on the screen is in fact only a 0.5% in the trainer resistance. it is not "resistance" exactly, the trainer has a grade simulation parameter and that is what is being configured.

edit: you forgot to post your article.

mr_pedro

Personally, I do mostly structured workouts in ERG mode, so gearing is not important.

When riding around Zwift you can adjust the trainer difficulty between 0-100%. 50 is just the default.
If you like to shift a lot or just want the high resistance experience of climbing, set the difficulty to 100%. Then, if your cassette is not big enough for the climbs you want to do, just set the difficulty a little bit lower. So just treat difficulty as a way to virtually increase the cassette.

sarhog

Added link, thanks.
The point I’m trying make make (with little success) is, no matter what you set the “realism” slider to, a given segment requires the same watts to climb.

mr_pedro

That is right, although with slider set to 0%, you can spin through any terrain and your legs will not be able to tell the difference if it is flat or climbing or downhill.

A couple of interesting points:

Slider set to zero will enable you to go faster down hill, because otherwise on a steep descent you will not have enough resistance to put down high power at high speed.

Setting slider to lower is not exactly equivalent to switching to a lighter gear. Relative to actually having a lighter gear, by setting the slider lower the flywheel will spin faster and this makes it easier to turn the pedals even if cadence and power is the same.

PoorInRichfield

I have the same cassette on my trainer that I do on my actual bike for consistency.

mr_pedro

Everyone is entitled to his own level of OCD behavior

PoorInRichfield

I resemble that remark! Since I end-up being indoors for nearly half the year due to Winter, I don't want my person getting used to one gear selection indoors only to have adjust and adapt when I go outside (or vice versa). This also helps ensure my bike shifts consistently on and off the trainer.

mr_pedro

Can”t comment on how it feels to you, however your bike should be fine. At least I can switch from outside to inside without the need for any rear derailleur adjustment. I think any misalignment would probably be due to manufacturing tolerances, which could always happen regardless if cassettes are identical.

ps: As a non native speaker I had to look up what the resemble comment meant, so learned something new.

msu2001la

That's a good link and I've never really understood this feature, and it makes a lot more sense to me now.

The one thing I still don't get is how Zwift handles power on descents. In reality, with a 52-11 gear on a downhill, you've basically "spun out" at around 40-45mph and can't physically spin your legs fast enough to apply any meaningful power to go faster. In Zwift, particularly if you are on a dumb trainer or have your trainer difficulty set low, you can still add power even at high speeds because you have something to push against.

I've easily hit 55-60mph on Zwift on my dumb trainer by simply hammering down hills, since my trainer provides plenty of resistance regardless of grade.

Wouldn't it make more sense for Zwift to set some kind of cut-off on speed where above a certain speed it doesn't factor in watts and your avatar is essentially just "coasting", even if you're still actually pedaling downhill? As I think about this, sitting on your bike and coasting while on an indoor trainer is kind of dumb as well, so maybe this doesn't make any sense.

Riding with the trainer difficulty set low definitely seems like it would be an advantage for racing, since you could hammer down descents more and also ride more of a steady tempo on rolling terrain.

mr_pedro

You handle the power, Zwift handles the resistance. So on a descent there will be very little resistance and you spin out, limiting the power you can put down. Unless you set trainer difficulty lower, then descents are treated more like flats with higher resistance.

Limiting the power of the avatar by speed is just making stuff more complicated for no good reason. What speed? Would it need to depend on your actual gears? How does it know in what gear you are?

I believe racers do set the difficulty to low, but not zero. That way they have the advantage you mentioned going down hill, but also they stil feel when the inclines start which is normally a signal to push harder to stay with the group or try and drop others.

zacster

I put an Ultegra 12-25 cassette on my Core, but have a Campy 13-29 cassette on the wheel now. My setup is Campy 10 and the Ultegra cassette was respaced to match that. I can still swap between them without adjusting anything, as it should be.

When it comes to noticing a difference, it is more of a difference between indoor and outdoor, the cassette difference is trivial. I've only climbed a few hills using the 29 in the rear outdoors, as I put it on halfway through last season and had to find a few hills here to try it, pandemic and all limiting travel.