Mountain biking in Zwift - does it work?
The COVID-19 crisis has forced many riders inside and onto their indoor trainers, with the popularity of apps like Zwift, TrainerRoad and The Sufferfest skyrocketing. After plenty of riding around the roads of Watopia on road and TT bikes in Zwift, I was intrigued by the option of in-game mountain biking, and being starved of cyclocross racing and shredding, decided to try it to see if could be a replacement.
I was seeking to answer three major questions:
Is mountain biking on Zwift fun?
Is it a comparable alternative to riding trails in the real world?
Is it a proof of concept for the incorporation of steering into regular Zwift riding?
Setting up your bike
To start, you’ll need to log into Zwift (duh), have your phone connected to the Zwift companion app and centred on your handlebars.
Slightly off-centre, but good enough.
Zwift recommends you mount your phone in a case to achieve this, but I was able to get it to work by sticking my phone to my Garmin out-front mount with some Blu-Tac.
Setting up the game
Once your bike is set up, select to ride in Watopia and ride on a mountain bike or CX bike, which you can select from the ‘Garage’ list in the options menu.
I saddled up on the Zwift MTB, partly because it’s the default option that most first-timers will use, and partly because any other MTB or CX bikes need to be bought from the Drop Shop, Zwift’s in-game store – all of which require at least 150,000 drops to purchase. You can see a full list of the CX, mountain, and gravel bikes available here.
Want to ride the Canyon Inflite of Mathieu van der Poel or Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado? You’ll need to be at level 10 and have a couple of hundred thousand spare drops to access it.
Once you’re riding, you’ll need to reach the starting point of the ‘Repack Ridge’ mountain biking segment, which can be found in Titans Grove in Watopia. If you want to minimize the distance from your spawn point to the start, it’s best to select the ‘Dust In The Wind’, ‘Muir and the Mountain’ or ‘Quatch Quest’ routes.
If you want to find it on the overall Zwift map, it’s here:
The distance from the spawn point to the start of Repack Ridge is about 4km, most of which is uphill. You may want to ride your road bike most of the way there to help speed up the commute.
Once you’re all set up and riding in the right direction, you’ll see a ? route option pop up as you ride south along Titans Grove. It should look like this:
Not sure why it’s marked with a question mark and not the official Repack Ridge name, but it’s probably related to it being a steering beta.
Select the right-hand option and you’ll be taken to the Repack Ridge trailhead.
The bike racks (which usually have a few mountain bikes racked up in them) are a nice touch, and reflective of Zwift including lots of cycling-related infrastructure elsewhere in the game.
One important note here: the option to turn onto the trailhead will only trigger if you’re approaching from the north – if you’re coming from the top of the Titan’s Grove climb to the south, it won’t activate, for…reasons. Honestly, I’m not sure why this is the case, as it makes it more difficult to ride repeat laps of Repack Ridge, even if you’re motivated enough to ride multiple laps in the same ride.
Anyway, with that mini-rant over, you’ll be asked to calibrate your handlebar position, which involves centring your phone and bars. It’s important to get this step right, as an inaccurate measurement will compromise your ability to keep your avatar riding straight.
To Zwift’s credit, the calibration process for the steering feature is very well explained.
Riding the trail
With that completed, you’re all set to explore Repack Ridge! Negotiating the 3km unidirectional trail in front of you sounds fairly straightforward – turn your handlebars to make your avatar turn a corner, and hold them straight if you want to go straight. Easy enough.
Obviously turning your bars on their axis isn’t exactly the same sensation one would normally get while leaning their bike over in a corner outdoors, but given the restrictions of riding on a trainer it isn’t too bad. One word of warning though: excessive turning may significantly shorten the life of whatever’s under your front wheel, as the remains of the cheap yoga mat under my bike can now attest.
Note the house in the distance - although this isn’t a high traffic area of Watopia, it’s good to see the amount of effort that’s gone into making the backgrounds pretty.
As you ride along, you’ll be faced with 10 sections where you’ll need to pick the right line and ride on the indicated side of the trail – usually shown through a blue arrow or line, with wrong lines indicated with orange crosses. The game will rate you as ‘Nice Line’ (full star), ‘OK’ (half a star), or ‘A Bit Rough’ (no star) depending on how closely you follow the indicated line.
A bit off the target line here, so I’m just OK.
I found the initial steering setting is a bit too sensitive for those with drop handlebars, which meant that it wasn’t too long before I found myself heading off the trail and into the scenery.
If you do find yourself in the virtual weeds, there’s no need to panic, as the game will redirect you back onto the main trail – similar to using the kiddie bumpers in a tenpin bowling alley.
To stop you from venturing off the trail again, you can also adjust the steering sensitivity using the slider in the bottom-left corner of the screen. I found the initial steering setting a little too sensitive for the drop-bar bike I was using, though the problem would likely not be quite as bad if a wider set of bars were used. That being said, I still had to reset the steering a couple of times by clicking the ‘Center Your Bars’ button to allow the system to pick up my inputs, as it had gotten into the habit of bouncing me from side to side along the trail no matter how hard or how often I turned the bars.
My real world handlebars are turned hard to the left here, but my avatar is still heading straight for the rocks.
Eventually I managed to get the hang of it, and managed to hit a few lines as the game intended. While it is satisfying to get your line just right, the fairly small text saying ‘Nice Line’ is the only indication you get while riding along that you’re doing well, and if those at Zwift are looking for places to improve, a separate audio cue for each outcome wouldn’t go astray.
Although Repack Ridge is primarily a steering challenge, don’t think that you’re just here to coast downhill and occasionally turn your bars – there are still a couple of steep climbs with tight hairpins that you’ll need to negotiate. The first 9 of the 10 star sections are spaced more towards the front end of the trail, with the last one on the other side of a 800m hill at an average of 8%, and a maximum of 20%. Having done it twice now, I can confidently say that it feels much harder than that.
15% - Ouch.
One last line selection and you can coast to the finish banner, where your time for the segment will be recorded and Zwift will ask you for your feedback on the steering system.
The jury’s still out.
Feedback
Is it fun?
I’ll give this one a qualified yes - stringing together multiple correct lines on a twisting downhill section is still just as satisfying as in the real world, and the first time it happened I definitely cracked a smile. It is good fun when it works well, but don’t assume you’ll be able to strap your phone to your handlebars and start shredding without incident - there’s likely to be quite a bit of faffing around before it all falls into place. It took me four tries to get two complete runs through the course without needing to quit and restart due to issues with steering sensitivity or recognition of steering inputs.
Is it a comparable alternative to riding trails in the real world?
No. As mentioned above, the difference in steering sensations means that you’ll never suddenly be tricked into believing that the trails are real. There’s too little feedback from the game to let you know when you’re doing well - either an audio cue to let you know you nailed the last cornering section, or even enhanced background audio that might help reinforce when you’re on the gravel trail as opposed to the grass on the sides.
Likewise, unless you own a crazy expensive trainer like a Tacx Neo 2 which can simulate different types of terrain (gravel, tarmac, wooden bridges etc.), there’s no feedback from the trainer telling you what’s happening, though Zwift can hardly be blamed for that.
Is it a proof of concept for the incorporation of steering into regular Zwift riding?
I imagine that this was part of the reasoning for Zwift’s decision to include it in the game as a test feature, but the short answer is no.
Although the steering might be satisfying to operate on a virtual mountain bike trail when the stars align and the system doesn’t misbehave, as it currently stands I can’t see any reason for it to replace the auto-steering the game currently uses. This is not just because I’ve got a special hatred of this steering system - it certainly has potential - but more because it’s well suited to rapid, sweeping changes of direction, rather than the occasional subtle adjustment needed to follow the many straights and gentle bends present in most Zwift courses, especially those based on roads in the real world.
While it shows some promise and is well worth a try, don’t expect mountain biking in Zwift to become a cornerstone of the game going forward.