Today's video is about the trainer difficulty setting within Zwift.
The most asked about and the least understood setting within Zwift
There's more to it than just going uphill
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Okay onto the details and the trainer Difficulty slider
or the setting within Zwift. What you need to know is the trainer
Difficulty slider or difficulty setting has no impact here in game
It's only what is sent to your smart bike or smart trainer in regard to the gradient
So for example in Zwift if my trainer slider was set to maximum and on screen
It said 10% then that's what Zwift sends to my smart bike or smart trainer
It will simulate a 10% gradient
Now if I was to set that slider to halfway such as 50%, the trainer difficulty in game no change whatsoever
The Avatar still has to ride up a 6% grade
However, once we've sends to the trainer or the smart bike is halved, so I only feel a 3% climb
However, there's more to it than that and
The downhill is a little different. By default Zwift will send only half of the negative gradient
To the smart bike or the smart trainer and that's when the slider is at maximum
so if I was riding down a
-10% gradient
Zwift will only send -5% to the smart bike or the smart trainer. If my trainer difficulty setting was 50% or half way
Things get a little trickier
Zwift first halves that value so -10% becomes -5% sent to the trainer
then that is halved again based on my user preferences
So what happens there is a -10% gradient with a 50% slider
Means I only feel negative 2.5% here on the smart bike or the smart trainer
But do remember in game the Avatar doesn't know any different. He's still flying down -10%
Okay, so that's the theory of how the training difficulty setting works both uphill and a little differently downhill
Let's put that into practice. What I've got here is the Kickr bike with tilt
I've got the virtual tilt shown on screen and below that the physical tilt the bike is being sent by Zwift
So as we go up the climb here with a maximum slider set
6%
7%
Very close to it. So one for one
uphill
with the trainer difficulty setting to maximum or 100%
So nine. Yep, very close
drops down a bit
Things get steeper around the corner here 11% . There we go
And you can see that almost one for one with virtual reality and the real reality here on the Kickr bike
So on the descent what we should see is half of what we have on screen there simulated, let's check it out
Okay, -7%. Bike -3.5%
There we go confirmation on that one that Zwift halves the negative gradient when the maximum trailer difficulty is on
There we go
-3.5% , -3.6% and
down to the flat
so there we are confirmation of the theory and
How things work with Maxium trainer difficulty enabled.
Let's go set that to half and see how it goes up and
quarter down
Okay
settings
Trainer Difficulty slider
You know, it's not a perfect science, but I think that's close enough. Okay
back to the ride
Exactly the same test as before with the same information on screen
The Zwift figure being and what the avatar has to deal with (that doesn't change) and the figure below that is the Kickr bike
Which is what's being sent to the trainer or smart bike.
Zero zero looking good
Okay up we go
6%
Just over 3%, 7%, 3.5%. There we go. It's half the figure set for the trainer
Remembering the avatar still has to ride up that steep gradient. Nothing changes there
10% 5.5%. Yep
And the turnaround remembering Zwift will halve the gradient by default and then halve it based on my preference
So I'll turn around and the simulated descent sent to the trainer
There we go that -2%
Again avatar doesn't change
My riders still flying down that descent
but
we have
One quarter of the descent simulation with a trainer slider set to half
So there we are is the title of the video stated the trainer difficulty slider
There's something more you need to know about the descents now
This has been confirmed with Zwift and we did confirm it there with what we're seeing through to the Kickr bike and it's the same
For any other smart trainer. I believe this decision was made early on in Zwift's development process to halve the negative gradients
That's because on a big long descent. There's nothing to push against and your avatar gain speed is all about generating lots
There's also a lot of differences between how trainers deal with zero resistance sent to them
Some will let go of resistance altogether, some will still apply a little bit of resistance. So it kind of levels the playing field there.
Could this be implemented any better way on Zwift for descents?
Maybe. I think descending and descending in a bunch could be based more on your positioning, maybe a bike handling if we had some steering
When it's based on watts we need something to push against to determine who goes fast and who goes not as fast.
Alrighty wrapping this one up for today. Hopefully this has been informative and interesting
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