msu2001la

Just making sure I'm not missing something, but it seems like you can only change bikes and other settings during an active ride, but also you have to be stopped to change bikes?

I find this especially annoying for group rides. I have to start a ride first, then select the bike I want, then quit that ride and join the group. Otherwise, i join the group ride and have to stop - switch bikes - then catch back up.

I get that they want to force people to stop to switch bikes, so that they aren't changing on the fly (climbing bike up, aero down, etc) but shouldn't I be able to decide which bike I'm showing up with before starting the ride?

Same with any other in-game settings. If I want to update my weight, or change my jersey or look at my challenge progress, etc I have to do all of this AFTER starting a ride. Am I missing something? I see no other option.

spelger

i've always found Zwift's interface obtuse.

blacknbluebikes 

msu2001la Yeah, you're reading it right. You have to be "in" the game and you have to be stopped to change bikes. Some damned architecture in the software that is probably way too hard to change relative to the number of people that are asking for it. So, what it means is that if you're doing an event, you need to get into Zwift a few minutes early (anywhere) and make your mods, THEN join the event. Particularly important for "banded" events where you need to stay bundled with the group (faster & slower riders don't drop away). If you halt in a banded event, it's unlikely you'll make it back to the group. One thing some users do is to jump on Zwift Insider and see what bike makes sense for the course - eg road bike vs. mountain bike.

genejockey 

My routine is generally to set aside 10 minutes for warmup, then do a spindown calibration (because I'm using a wheel-on Smart trainer), and then select whatever bike I'm going to use. Or if I'm in the start pens for a race/ride, I'll do it then. In a way, though, the difficulty in switching bikes is kind of like reality, where you can't generally switch bikes on the fly.

Bald Paul

himespau 

Since you have to get into a different world before you enter a pen for an event anyway (that's dumb too), it's not that much effort to just log in a little early to do the whole garage thing either in the pen or before you go to the start pen. Dumb, but that's how it is. Since the only events I do are races and I like to be in the front of the pen, I tend to join them when the first open, so I have lots of time, but other people do things differently.

unterhausen

the way zwift is set up is really weird. At least they finally show you which routes you have completed in the list of routes for you to select. I don't see why a lot of this stuff isn't available in the web interface. And needing the companion app for things is pretty annoying too. It uses battery so quickly my phone can't charge enough to keep up.

sdmc530

I thought the UI was being fixed? I have not seen it on apple tv yet but.....

himespau 

Apparently, as of the February update, the new UI is on all our devices, but they're slowly rolling out the activation to users in small batches to see if there are any crippling bugs rather than doing an all at once swap over to the new UI.

sdmc530

did not know this.....so what are they saying about it so far? Anybody know?

himespau 

The only comment I've seen was one dude on red d it who said that his wife had the new update but he didn't.

spelger

wow, they are actually being careful about introducing bugs? they must have recently hired someone with a brain.

sdmc530

meh, I think we know better

himespau 

Yeah. You'd think the slow rollout would be to check for bugs, but it seems like every other update is just pushed out in batch and adds a lot of bugs.

PeteHski

So are you always joining group rides late then? If you join a group ride at the start then you can change your bike in the holding pen while warming up.

msu2001la

No, I'm not always joining group rides late.
I realize I can modify settings while warming up in a starting pen. I was thinking more specifically about riding with pace partners. If I used a gravel or MTB on a previous ride, when I fire up Zwift to do a pace partner ride the next day, I am by default still on the gravel or MTB bike. That makes sense, but switching seems unnecessarily complicated. I have to start a ride, go into settings, change my bike, quit the ride, then join a pace partner ride.

It would be a lot easier and make more sense to be able to change the bike settings from the start screen, rather than having to start a ride to access settings.

I feel the same about modifying clothing, avatar appearance, checking my status in challenges, etc. The whole UI on Zwift seems really clunky and poorly thought out. Why do I have to go to a 3rd party website to know if a route is paved or gravel? Why is the elevation profile on screen during rides so tiny and only for specific segments rather than the entire route? Why can't I customize the on-screen data to show averages for power or speed? Why doesn't Zwift show me how many miles I have ridden each bike, or times I've ridden particular routes, etc?

I love Zwift, I just don't understand why for $180/year the interface is many times worse than any other video game out there (most of which are significantly cheaper).

unterhausen

Is the new UI supposed to fix anything?

I agree settings should be available at the start screen, or at least the route selection screen. But I might give that up for a program that started up in a reasonable amount of time or even one that updated properly where I had confidence it was going to start that day.

spelger

i doubt zwift was written with any of that in mind, it always seemed to me to be written to capture a large audience and keep them (kind of like meth, not important what is in there, just as long as the user gets hooked). as time goes on code like that becomes very difficult to maintain and hence the number of bug fix releases immediately after a feature release. ever notice how easy it is for them to add new socks or a new helmet? but a new route or a new useful feature? that is a very big undertaking for them.

i do like zwift but not enough to pay for it anymore. i suppose i'll return as a paying customer when i get bored with the other stuff out there.

PeteHski

Ultimately it's a tiny niche market compared to mainstream video gaming. It is what it is. Sure it could be better, but these are first world issues that don't bother me much. I think Zwift is pretty good on the whole. The things that matter seem to work pretty well for me. The main one being a reliable live connection and lots of decent group rides/events. I don't think I've experienced a single mid-ride crash or dropout in 2 years. Before Zwift I tried Bkool, but that had loads of issues on group rides/races. Bike/kit choosing on the start screen would make sense, but not a big deal.

msu2001la

Overall I like Zwift too and will continue to utilize it, mostly because it's still better than the alternatives I've tried, but I have gripes... and griping about things on the internet is kind of what this place is for, no? First world problems? Give me a break... we're on a cycling forum.

In terms of your "tiny niche market" comment - Zwift got $450M in funding in 2020. They claimed 3M accounts created, 45,000 simultaneous users and state that "hundreds of thousands of customers are using Zwift on a daily basis". Sure, we're not talking "Grand Theft Auto" numbers here, but Zwift isn't some tiny garage startup. They can afford to fix their junk and clean up their user interface a bit.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robreed...h=7542dc843f86

himespau 

Apparently, the original code was written by some dude in his garage as a weekend side project to see if he could. I've been told (not sure if it's true) that the whole architecture is still built on the poorly documented base built with patches on top of patches. If so, streamlining it and cleaning up a lot of the issues would require a complete rewrite, not just some patches.

Sure, completely re-coding a Zwift 2.0 would make future updates easier and cleaner with fewer bugs, but it would take a lot of resources and is not the kind of think you can point to your venture capital funders and say, "this is what we did with your money. It won't bring in any direct financial returns but will make future changes easier."

PeteHski

Just saying it's peanuts compared to the mainstream gaming market. I don't think their user interface is all that bad. It's got some quirks for sure, but the platform is solid and reliable. Only being able to change your bike/kit during an active ride is for me a First World problem even on a cycling forum, lol. I would rather they worked on elements like active steering (which currently sucks) and some form of braking to make descending more realistic. How cool would it be if you could run wide and crash when pushing your limits on descents? I know it would be hard to implement across a wide range of different trainers, but it should at the very least auto-brake on twisty descents. Ignoring corners entirely is very lazy programming.

unterhausen

Since I never do group rides, changing things doesn't matter to me much. The one thing I wish they would fix is the guest worlds. There are a number of worlds I don't want to ride in any more, and they are on the schedule all the time. I think they could add more worlds, given that they allow private group rides to be in any world that you want. And there are hacks to allow you to go to any world you want.

superdex

as a software guy, I read this and think -- yeah that's great. Go ahead and submit the comments. They're all features that some product manager has to decide whether it's worth the screen real estate to jam it in, where to jam it in, whether it's more important than the other things on the product roadmap (like steering and drafting enhancements maybe?) and then work with the dev team for feasibility etc. It's not a straight line.

I also imagine the product group at Zwift considers changing bikes mid-ride a 'not that often' thing. I mean really, the in-game performance difference isn't that much, unless you're talking mtn bike<->tt bike, but still, I'd suggest the skins and gamification are fun and all, but how many people are changing their bikes every ride to maximize the game engine's calculations? --Are you updating your weight every ride too?

At the end of the day, I'm sure it has to do with how and when the graphics for the worlds and skins are loaded and managed for the game engine. shrug.

superdex

I agree the rotation is crap. Why isn't France more often? Worse, when I stare at the calendar, there's no indication of Today on it --and the week starts on Sunday people! I accidentally discovered how to stay in a world a few weeks ago when I took two sessions to do Ven-top --ended up with the jersey too simply because hardly anybody else was in the world, ha!