gthomson

Today is Zwift's Ven-Top challenge to acknowledge the TDF riding up and down Ventoux twice. Anyone going to take up the challenge? I was thinking about it but not sure I have a 2 + hour window free today to do it. Maybe I could start it and see how far I get.

BTW, does anyone know why it's referred to Ven-Top on Zwift when originally, it was called Ventoux? when I first rode it last year in Aug. 2020, it was listed as Mont Ventoux.

spelger

hats off if you do it. i've done it twice in under 90 minutes and both times were tough going. what i don't like about it is that i find it boring. that last climb just before the end is a doosy. what i like about the alpe are the numerous switch backs. i know, same thing over and over but it does break things up a bit.

90 minutes of indoor riding while it is so nice outside...maybe in 6 months.

Ed Wiser

It’s name Ven-top because it is Zwift’s version of the Mountain. Not the actual gps of the ride.

Here is today’s actual ride up the mountain.

https://my.rouvy.com/virtual-routes/detail/36772

gthomson

A nice view of the climb up the mountain. Does your trainer apply resistance as you go up it based on the grade you are climbing?

I thought that Zwift was using real GPS locations on some of their routes like NYC or London?

Ed Wiser

I ride a Wahoo Kickr bike so the answer is yes and it also tilts to the grade. Zwift doesn’t always use the actual GPS. Rouvy rides are gps recorded from the the person doing the video. An it is 100% reality. So it’s a tough route.

spelger

for what ever reason zwift put the big hill in New Caldonia. i am supposing that they don't want the real route contaminated with a bunch of potentially fake data.

gthomson

spelger How did you see that? I heard that Watopia is some Island in the South Pacific as well so that all those virtual rides don't impact any real destination.

unterhausen

The only place I have ridden IRL that's on zwift is Richmond, and they did a fairly good job of simulating that for a lot of it. But it's obviously different. Do those routes overlap real roads if you change the files to delete the designation that it's an indoor ride?

spelger

Watopia is on an island north east of austrailia. like the ride in france, the grade in watopia does not match the actual terrain where they chose to put it.

i upload all my rides to strava from the various devices i record from and then pull them all down using my own program just to have the data locally. i assume that one day the stuff that gets pushed up to strava may become the property of strava. so, just go to strava, look at a ride you did in zwift and zoom out like below.

London, NY, Richmond, Yorkshire, and Innsbruck are all in their real places. i don't remember hills south of london so don't know how true that is.

msu2001la

There are two types of worlds on Zwift. GPS-accurate worlds, and everything else.
GPS accurate worlds = London, Richmond, Innsbruck, Yorkshire, Paris and NYC. In those worlds, the routes are GPS coordinated to real-world locations. The roads on these routes (to a point*) are all exact replicas of real-world roads, and use the same map and gradient. *Exceptions to this are some of the fictionalized areas like riding through the London Underground tube, or the NYC flyovers. The climb outside of London is a real climb in Surry Hills, but connected via fictional roads that place it much closer to Central London than in real life.

Non GPS worlds = Watopia, France, Makuri Islands. These are completely original worlds that have no correlation to real-world locations. Designers have more freedom in non-GPS worlds (you can ride in an underwater tunnel, or through a volcano) and they can still insert GPS accurate re-creations like "Alpe d'Zwift" and "Ven-Top". Those specific climbs are both GPS-accurate recreations of the actual climbs, they just don't share the same coordinates (because they are accessible from the larger non-GPS worlds that they live in). Zwift could easily pull these out and make them their own GPS-accurate world, like they did with Paris vs France, but then you wouldn't be able to ride them as often (due to the rotating world schedule) nor would you be able to link to them from other routes (like the Fire and Ice route where you go from volcano to Alpe d'Zwift).

When you upload a Zwift ride to Strava, it tags it as "virtual" and does not include it in real-world segments. Strava has it's own virtual ride segments for those routes, some of which probably match real-world segments. I've never checked to compare. Strava does not let you change a virtual ride to a regular ride, but it's probably possible to hack the data file and trick Strava into thinking a virtual ride was a real ride.

jaxgtr

I also choose Rouvy over Zwift as I like using the actual routes that people have recorded.