Ultimately, I want to spend as little as possible, whilst not pulling my hair out waiting for zwift to load on my current piece of shit! (which was also a refurbished Dell Inspiron that struggles to even keep up with typing … yet if you give it time [like 5-10mins] will load and run zwift smoothly)
I am running Zwift on a 7 year old HP Pavillion 23 All in One, with core i5, 8GB ram, 1TB hard drive (no SSD) and windows 10
I did a complete SW rebuild in November, and installed only Zwift, Chrome and Norton.
Really impressed with the speed, it handles Zwift, on HD resolution without any issues. When I first ran it, it did take a while to load the latest Zwift updates, but since then its been great
The Dell you are looking at is much more recent than my PC, so think that it will be fine
For as long as I have been using Zwift, I have had the trainer difficulty set in the default position at 50%. However, over the past couple of rides I have set it at 90%
I did The Tour De Watopia Stage 5 race yesterday evening… and it was a revelation: Normally I struggle to keep up with the peloton on the inclines, and need to put in massive power (like 400+w). Not so yesterday, in fact I was pulling to the front on the inclines. I am speculating that with the trainer difficulty set to a lower percentage, Zwift slows the climb by a fraction too much, however, this could be the difference between hanging onto the pack and getting dropped.
I will now see how it goes with difficulty set to maximum.
In theory it should be neutral. If the trainer is set to 50% then a 10% grade feels like 5%, however, Zwift then adjusts the speed downwards to simulate the speed that you would climb a 10% grade for the power you are producing. The advantage of having the trainer at 50% is less gear changes
My experience yesterday was just an observation as I tyically struggle on the climbs during races. However, it is possible that my Zwift climbing skills have improved, or the peloton I was riding with was not as spicy as normal
I’ve never used Zwift, but why is the default setting 50%, not 100% to simulate the real world?
It sounds like a bit of an ego boost so users think they’re better than they are.
I used Bkool for a few years and that was pretty accurate. I uploaded some local routes I use and it was always within a minute or two of my real times.
setting at 50% doesn’t make you quicker… as while the gearing is eased up a bit, so is your speed (its not an extreme change, eg 0% doesn’t make a climb equal to a flat)… I agree though, that it seems a bit of a daft feature.
I’m equally surprised. I didn’t notice much difference downhills, The only change I made was to get into a higher gear slightly earlier, and add a few extra watts just before the descent starts, so there was no big dip in power.
In Zwift races in the past, I am almost always at or near the front on the flat, but drop back on the climbs.
The race yesterday was slightly insane, due to being just 17km long.
Theres some good testing done by The Lama. going down is only 50% at 100% if that makes sense so 10% down at 100% realism is actually 5% down…I always have 100% but the problem i have on the neo with the downhill simulation is you lose the bunch as you cant put pressure down, where as someone on 25% or a dumb trainer has the same / similar resistance through the pedals and can still keep good power.
I use a 2012 HP laptop for Zwift; no issues. Core i5 processor. Battery life is obviously pants now though. Also use a dumb trainer & PM, so for me it’s just varying the pressure on the pedals and my cadence.
One best effort on Zwift over a longish period was averting 267 watts over 42km, 515mtrs for 1hr19m. ( it was a ST ride and I was trying in vain to keep up with Jordan Rapp)
I built on this over the next few months. I run a virtual TT bike with 808s for every ride I do.
On long descents (Epic Climb for example) I cannot hold over 255watts on the descent (which usually means approx 85kph). These days I couldn’t hold it because I’m slow but back then I always wondered why descending with power felt so bloody hard!
You make life really hard for yourself riding the virtual TT bike in races as it gets no draft effect, so while people in the peloton would be on 220w, you would need to push something like 260
Definitely seeing what you lot are on about in terms of motivation. Given ZP put me cat B I tried that today. Buried myself to stay with the front group but lost them at the end of the lead in. Soloed the first volcano lap, then got caught by a second group and had the motivation to stick with them. All time third best 20min power. 24hrs after a 90min 3x20 sweetspot workout on trainerroad yesterday.
Matthew just said 260 vs 220 - that is not a huge benefit and nothing like reality. I’ve seen zwift races, again the benefit isn’t there - indeed we can tell from the tactics that the benefits aren’t realistic 'cos people are actually willing to just ride hard on the front which in real life drops no-one at all, 'cos the benefits are so large.
