Anyone else on Zwift?

[LJohnny]

Tried to post video, but didn't work. Will try ltr

Okay another try (tapatalk isn't the friendliest to this sort of thing)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0c-29zsK8fY

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ceolwulf]

Originally Posted by mtb_frk

It's about time for a new laptop and want to get a MacBook Pro, I think. I'm looking at the 13" with Intel Iris integrated graphics card. I'm just wondering if any one has a newer MacBook and is using Zwift. I know a pc would cost less and have better performance numbers but I want to try something different.

Then my next question will be if my lousy internet is even fast enough to use it.

I run it on a Mac Mini with HD4000 graphics and it works acceptably but could be a lot better. I use 720p resolution. When going through the forest section of the Richmond course frame rate drops to probably mid teens, it's pretty bad, but elsewhere it's okay. The Iris graphics should have nearly double the performance so I think you would be fine but more graphics power would make a big difference. Really recommend stepping up to something with a discrete graphics card. And unfortunately with the MacBook lineup the way it is now that's an expensive step.

Internet speed isn't a big issue. These kind of games don't use much bandwidth and ping time in Zwift is almost irrelevant. As long as it's stable and doesn't drop out it should be okay.

[livingminimal]

My dongle came in the mail and opened my account yesterday.
Going to try and go on this morning. It's been in the upper 30s in the morning here in California and el Nino is on the way, so gonna try Zwift and see how it goes.

no smart trainer, just a cycleops fluid. have a power meter though.

Nice that Strava Premium users get a couple of free months.

[carpediemracing]

FYI on the hardware - frame rate, resolution, that's mainly the hardware (computer, laptop, etc).

If you have power drops it's usually the Ant+ dongle not being close enough to the speed/cadence/power/whatever pick ups. It's that or your connection to the internet is not great.

If all the riders disappear and come back it's because your connection isn't great to the world (not your wireless network at home, your connection from wireless to the world). With a lower speed DSL line this happens to me if we stream something else to a different machine.

I think a lot of people blame the software when it's really a poor internet connection. Not poor (local network) wireless, poor internet.

Now if your avatar ends up flying through the sky etc then that's a different thing altogether.

On my MacBook Pro, Early 2011 according to "about this Mac" and upgraded to 16 GB RAM, I get a stuttering frame rate for many parts of Zwift with default settings. That's the graphics engine in the computer, assuming CPU is up to snuff. It's particularly bad if I'm trying to watch a second clip (like I was overlaying one of my clips and doing Zwift). Even if Zwift is running in the background (not logged in) it uses a lot of the computer, like it would be virtually impossible to type a response to Paceline because of the lag.

[carpediemracing]

Originally Posted by livingminimal

My dongle came in the mail and opened my account yesterday.
Going to try and go on this morning. It's been in the upper 30s in the morning here in California and el Nino is on the way, so gonna try Zwift and see how it goes.

no smart trainer, just a cycleops fluid. have a power meter though.

Nice that Strava Premium users get a couple of free months.

Do you have an Ant+ powermeter or will you need to do a dumb trainer set up?

Regardless it would be interesting to see what you see if you select Fluid2 as the classic trainer and then see how Zwift lines up with your powermeter.

For me, with a non-Ant+ SRM powermeter, I have to select classic trainer (Fluid2 until it leaked, now on a Kinetic Road Machine). For the Fluid2 the SRM consistently read 40-50w higher at lower wattages (50-300+) and 100w higher at high wattages (800-1100w). This means if I was going 200w by the SRM (which is very hard for me to sustain) Zwift would say 155w or so. 300w SRM meant 255w Zwift. It was a built-in 0.6-.7 w/kg handicap, which was fine. If the Fluid2 was cold then the power numbers were bang on.

With the Kinetic it's very close but my SRM is now dying a bit so the SRM drifts pretty quickly. Therefore I can't tell how accurate Zwift is relative to the Kinetic. With a new battery in the SRM (on my to do list) I should be able to see how it compares, SRM->Kinetic.

[shovelhd]

I just got the Zwift email. Thanks for the heads up. I was hoping for some kind of warmup functionality without doing two workouts and the new flat option looks great for that. I'll try it.

[mtb_frk]

I have to use a LTE hotspot where I live. I have Verizon and it's been pretty slow when I connect to it over wifi from my phone, like 4Mbps. However my ATT phone I get about 23 Mbps, that's download speed of course upload is slower. The hotspot is about 4 or 5 years old at this point so I wonder if it's age is why it is so much slower than ATT. The nice thing with Verizon is that they have a lot of different data only plans where ATT, as far as I can tell only has one.

[kramnnim]

I don't think you'll have any issues with 4mbps, it doesn't use a ton of bandwidth.

[livingminimal]

Originally Posted by carpediemracing

Do you have an Ant+ powermeter or will you need to do a dumb trainer set up?

Regardless it would be interesting to see what you see if you select Fluid2 as the classic trainer and then see how Zwift lines up with your powermeter.

For me, with a non-Ant+ SRM powermeter, I have to select classic trainer (Fluid2 until it leaked, now on a Kinetic Road Machine). For the Fluid2 the SRM consistently read 40-50w higher at lower wattages (50-300+) and 100w higher at high wattages (800-1100w). This means if I was going 200w by the SRM (which is very hard for me to sustain) Zwift would say 155w or so. 300w SRM meant 255w Zwift. It was a built-in 0.6-.7 w/kg handicap, which was fine. If the Fluid2 was cold then the power numbers were bang on.

With the Kinetic it's very close but my SRM is now dying a bit so the SRM drifts pretty quickly. Therefore I can't tell how accurate Zwift is relative to the Kinetic. With a new battery in the SRM (on my to do list) I should be able to see how it compares, SRM->Kinetic.

Im doing a dumb trainer + a stages power meter.

I am not taking the feedback too seriously. It seems the power looks a bit low for how much effort Im putting in, but my cadence numbers were much higher, I need to play with resistance a bit I reckon.

It was a fun experience, but other than ridiculously cold (by our Southern California standards - high 30s) weather or rain, I don't think I would use it much, well maybe at night if I didn't get a chance to ride during the day...

[mtb_frk]

Originally Posted by kramnnim

I don't think you'll have any issues with 4mbps, it doesn't use a ton of bandwidth.

The weather here has pretty much sucked too warm too ride, not cold enough to freeze up the ground, lots of mud. So hopefully I can get this working, and get some motivation to stop binge watching game of thrones.