zwift Watopia. Anybody ridden it yet?

[makoti]

Just saw where zwift has a new course, Watopia. Since the weather broke here, I haven't (thankfully) ridden inside but I was wondering how it compares to the old one. Opinions? Reviews?

[shovelhd]

Tonight. I can't ride outside yet.

[shovelhd]

It's rolling with a long stair step climb. This was my first experience. I don't get how some people ride.

[kramnnim]

Century a couple weeks ago. (rainy weekend)

Seems easier to get the jerseys. The rollers make it more interesting, on Jarvis you could just TT the whole lap at a steady effort. On Watopia, you "need" to treat the rollers like you would in the real world. (unless you don't care about your lap times)

[makoti]

Interesting. Glad to see they finally got another route out there. I guess it is a longer loop, as well? That should help with the boredom factor if you don't see the same graphics 5 or 6 times in a 20 mile ride. Tell me there's no banjo music. ;-)

[kramnnim]

Yeah, it's almost twice the length. No banjos...

[carpediemracing]

I've ridden it a number of times.

Longer hill, steeper pitches. My avatar really slows, like it looks like I just shifted into a 20x34 or something.

Some banking in turns, the avatar leans. I try to look away as it makes me nauseous.

KOM hill is longer, about 2x longer. Jersey winners are 120 sec, not 50 sec. Sprint is also longer, almost 3x longer, 21 sec vs 7 sec. Both are less clearly marked, just a white line on the road. Before there was a sign (KOM or 200m to go).

Laps take me about 2x as long (my regular laps before were 15 min, now 30 min).

I'll try to make the Amgen/Voigt ride this afternoon, 10 AM PDT which makes it 1 PM local. Otherwise I'll ride tonight.

I normally ride at zPower = 70-120w. Zwift shorts me about 40-50w at those levels, meaning I'm seeing 120-170w on my SRM.

My best old KOM was 1:30-ish at about 300w zPower, best sprint was 7 sec, 1000w zPower. New KOM haven't done an effort (right now it takes me 5-7 minutes).

New sprint with new physics engine (updated a few days ago and makes it harder to accelerate) 21 sec and I blew 2 sec to go. New sprint with old physics engine, 18s. Old island sprint 7 sec. zPower and real power about 1000w for 10s, about 800w for 20s (new sprint only).

Never did a full on lap with either course.

[MattTuck]

Ok, stupid question from someone who has never used this.

You say you're going to do the Amgen/Voigt ride... does that mean everyone gets on their bike/computer at the same time, and rides their trainer and talks to eachother? (is this like a video game where you have a head set and are talking to the people around you?)

[makoti]

I'm guessing that these are planned rides & posted somewhere with start times. Where is that info?

[shovelhd]

Yes and no. The Jens ride is on the splash page. To join I would think that you would just log in and choose to follow Jens Voight instead of choosing Ride Now.

What I don't get is why everyone seems to be constantly attacking each other.

[makoti]

What I don't get is why everyone seems to be constantly attacking each other.

So it's just like any club ride? ;)

[carpediemracing]

Ok, stupid question from someone who has never used this.

You say you're going to do the Amgen/Voigt ride... does that mean everyone gets on their bike/computer at the same time, and rides their trainer and talks to eachother? (is this like a video game where you have a head set and are talking to the people around you?)

I managed to get in (Junior obliged with an early nap and he went down like it was a mission of his, versus the normal hour to get him to close his eyes).

The difference with the Voigt ride is that he was being interviewed live and it was being broadcast on some site. I had a choice of listening to the broadcast or not, I chose to listen. It was interesting to hear him answer some questions etc, the whole time he's riding. There were a bunch of people in the room with him, people were using Twitter to ask him questions, etc.

Zwifters had to text him (that's the in game conversation structure, no voice yet) or tweet questions.

He rode pretty steady and pretty hard for a mortal. Based on what I saw briefly with some power numbers during th Tour or something he can do 400w and be at 150 bpm or something nutty like that. I went way into the red and got shelled in a few minutes. When they lapped me I literally couldn't even get on a wheel, they blew right by me.

As a finale they eased a lot and then Voigt invited everyone to hit the KOM hard. I was already dropped so I went to spectator mode (click on the rider and watch him). It was incredible, he was holding 900w pretty much for the whole climb. They muted his mic for a bit but then at the top they unmuted and you could hear all these people cracking up, laughing.

Jens got flagged for having an improper set up, aka the game thought he was cheating.

The actual warning sign that pops up is something like "You either missed your calling as a pro cyclist or your equipment is set up wrong".

As a flagged rider his effort didn't go up on the leader board so I have no idea how he did.

[SpeedyChix]

Longer laps, better mix on the backside of the course. Not just a fly fast downhill.
They've been working along pretty quickly on this one to clean up some of the weird things (both visual and ride load). The steeper gradients may still feel a bit light.

I ride it the days I'm doing VO2 work inside. Weather is getting pretty nice now so it'll be a rainy day only use soon.