New Zwift Features For Summer 2024
Today, Zwift is announcing a slate of new features being rolled out over the next few months including a new “The Grade” climbing-specific route expansion, enhancements to their user interface making it easier to visualize stats, elevation profiles, and routes, as well as an easier way to schedule workouts from Zwift or workouts from other platforms.
“The Grade” is new expansion to the recently-released Southern Coast section of Watopia with a climbing-specific route staring at the base of the Ciudad de La Cumbre with a steep climb ending at the top of the Epic KOM.
The most interesting aspect of this route though is at the top, when you finish the climb, you’ll be “graded” on your performance (as per the name of this new expansion).
Next up, there’s a revamp to their heads-up display with numerous changes that make it much easier to see your data as well as visualizing your route.
First off, you’ll have the ability to customize the data you want to see. You can now customize the “Power tile” (the upper left hand tile) to display stats such as speed, average power, power-to-weight ratio (w/kg), cadence, as well as heart rate.
Additionally, the the mini-map in the upper-right hand corner gets a welcome refresh with the actual elevation profile of your entire route vs the somewhat ambiguous elevation profile that we’ve had before.
The most exciting update to the heads-up display may be the new “Climb Mode” which shows a dynamic elevation profile display of the road ahead which visualizes gradients with shading like what we’ve seen with climbs on the climb portal.
When it comes to training, these are very welcome updates for someone like me who has a more challenging time finding and queueing up Zwift workouts. You’ll now be able to “queue up” workouts with a new interface in the Zwift Companion app where you’ll be able to quickly choose a workout, add it to your “My List”, which then serves it up for you in the Home screen of the Zwift game so it’s easy to get to that workout right away when you launch the game.
Other updates with this new release include a new Training API which other training platforms could use to feed workouts directly into Zwift and these workouts also are accessible with the new My List feature.
Being that the TDF is right around the corner, there’s more updates themed around the cycling event of the summer with Zwift announcing that they’re the official “Training Software Provider” of the 2024 Tour de France. With this collaboration, they’ll be bringing TDF themed content to the game including a TDF-yellow theme to the game coming this summer along with special climb portal events.
And of course, there’s also content surrounding the Tour de France Femmes.
The final stage of the race in real life finishes on top of the famed Alpe d’Huez. To celebrate, Zwift’s own Alpe du Zwift will be themed based on the occasion.
There’s also Alpe Celebration RoboPacer events which will take place every two hours on Alpe du Zwift as well as structured workouts released every week inspired by the Tour de France Femmes.
This should be an exciting season for Zwift and there are many more features in the works. Look for more details on enhancements to Zwift in the future.
