Zwift is a massively multiplayer online cycling and running game and training program that enables users all over the world to interact, train and compete in a virtual world. The company Zwift Inc., was cofounded by Jon Mayfield, Eric Min, Scott Barger and Alarik Myrin.
The concept was first made public in a forum post on the triathlete website Slowtwitch, when co-founder Jon Mayfield described a side project "to make training less dull." Zwift was released in its beta version in September 2014 and became a paid product with a fee of $10 per month in October 2015
Zwift allows players to ride their bicycles on turbo trainers while navigating through three virtual worlds: Watopia, a fictional creation; a reproduction of the 2015 UCI Road World Championships race course in Richmond, Virginia, USA; and a virtual reproduction of areas in London, UK, including the race course used for the 2012 Summer Olympics road cycling events. A course schedule dictates which of the three courses is accessible on any given day. Players may cycle freely around the game world, join organised group rides, races or workouts with other users in any of the 195 countries in which Zwift has subscribers.
Zwift uses ANT+ or Bluetooth SMART technologies to transmit data that, in combination with athlete weight and equipment choices, is used to convert the athlete's efforts as speed and power (watts). "Smart" trainers, which include a built-in power meter, permit both accuracy in the measurement of watts as well as enabling an Immersive technology experience, where resistance is applied or lessened to simulate the gradient encountered on the virtual course. Athletes using conventional (also referred to as "dumb") trainers do not experience changes in resistance or simulated gradient; instead, the Zwift software applies an algorithm to approximate the effect of gradient changes, for example reducing the participant's in-game speed on uphill sections if power is not increased. Zwift estimates the power of users on "dumb" trainers via the user's cadence and the Power curve of a wide range of specified trainers.
Zwift was originally available only for users with personal computers, with more sophisticated Gaming computers which included powerful Graphics Cards producing the best results. Subsequent development work has been aimed at making the programme run satisfactorily on less expensive machines. In addition, in December 2016 Zwift launched on iOS and in November 2017 the application became available via Apple TV The company is currently developing the programme to run on Android devices with an ambition to make it available on selected devices in 2018. Zwift also includes a mobile app which allows users to change direction, take screenshots, communicate via messaging, use power-ups and follow other athletes.
It is widely acknowledged that Zwift has transformed the previously dull pursuit of cycling indoors with the twin concepts of the "gamification" of cycling and "making cycling social". Winter training had been seen previously by cyclists as a duty usually reluctantly performed solo. Zwift has successfully transformed the task into an attractive pursuit undertaken in the company of others. Zwift has played a leading role in re-activating a previously moribund turbo trainer industry with the smart trainer revolution improving the fortunes of companies like Wahoo Fitness, Tacx, Elite and CycleOps, amongst others.
A large online community has sprung up around Zwift with many Facebook groups catering for general and special interests within the game The game has also spawned its own media network with many streaming channels as well as a podcast and an authoritative website [1]
In common with many similar companies, Zwift is reluctant to disclose subscriber numbers. In October 2016, an article on the respected Tech Crunch site quoted a figure of 170,000 active accounts. In May 2017 CEO Eric Min discussed "300,000 accounts created" on a podcast As of January 2018, it is estimated that are over 550,000 accounts.
While Zwift did not invent what has come to be known as Virtual Cycling, it has perfected the technology and brought it successfully to a mass market and it played a large part in devising a new industry category, that of indoor cycling.
It also augmented the lexicon of the sport: "Zwifting" and to be a "Zwifter" are now a part of cycling language.
Video Zwift
Virtual Cycling History
Many cyclists retreat indoors to train in winter because of adverse weather. Others train indoors to recuperate from injury safely. A number choose to base some training indoors, not because of weather or injury but because of its effectiveness, with precise training targets more easily accomplished away from traffic, stop lights or less than ideal terrain.
Turbo training, or ergo training, has a surprisingly long history with crude "home trainer" devices simulating cycling outside dating back as far as the 1880s In the pre-computer era and before the wide availability of video, cyclists found turbo training to be monotonous, dull and an activity performed reluctantly in order to maintain fitness. The phrase "staring blankly at the garage wall" summed up the boredom of using a turbo trainer. Music provided some distraction.
The availability of VHS recorders and players in the 1980s and 1990s allowed cyclists to train whilst watching recordings of famous races like the Tour de France, witnessing professional riders in action to providing motivation and distraction, but still many complained that home training was dull.
At the same time as VHS training videos began to debut, enterprising software and hardware companies began producing the first indoor cycling video game software, sometimes marketed as "exergames". The first of which came from Autodesk in 1980; a company more famous for its architectural and design software. Autodesk Highcycle, the first indoor cycling video game, gave users a virtual reality headset which connected to a special, proprietary indoor bike unit and allowed users to ride around a crude virtual world. In 1982, the Atari company embarked on an internal project codenamed "puffer", which saw another proprietary indoor bicycle unit design which allowed both steering and control of speed through pedaling and connected to the Atari 8 bit computer line. The puffer project was scrapped due in large part to the Video game crash of 1983.
By the 1980s, electronic, computer controllable indoor trainers were on the market which included the ability to display bike power in watts, something that previously required expensive lab grade equipment to achieve. The pioneer of this type of electronic trainer, RacerMate, with their Computrainer model, released "Racermate Challenge" in 1986 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, an early third generation 8-bit home video game console. Racermate Challenge was the first indoor training software which allowed a cyclist to use their own bicycle and attach it to a controllable resistance unit. The resistance unit would change resistance based on the terrain in the virtual world (as rendered on the NES), and a heads-up-display on the software would display important metrics like the users power, heart rate, and pedaling cadence. Racermate Challenge also allowed a second user to connect to the system for side-by-side racing. While RacerMates Computrainer indoor trainer model was a commercial success, "Racermate Challenge" was not. RacerMate continues to develop software for Microsoft Windows to this day. The Computrainer trainer was discontinued in early 2018.
The Singapore company The Sufferfest was amongst the first to combine footage of professional races with training programmes using interval training techniques aimed at serious cyclists using home trainers The company developed a humorous culture around the idea that training in this way was hard and painful. They later added an app and launched their Four-Dimensional Power concept, which replaced a dependency on FTP. However, for most cyclists, turbo-training was still a solitary activity.
Other companies began to take advantage of increasing developments in technology to make turbo training more interesting with two notable attempts at linking cyclists around the world as broadband connectivity became more widespread.
The American company Netathlon was an early pioneer. From around 2005, cyclists reported using the software, which offered a variety of "virtual courses" to link bicycles, home trainers and computers together to make resistance on the trainers change according to the terrain on the course and to facilitate group riding The graphics in the Netathlon products were crude by modern standards, and crude for the time by the standards of computer games, but a small community (now defunct) developed around Netathlon using Yahoo Groups. Users reported patchy support from the company and difficulty in synchronising terrain and resistance changes on trainers. Nevertheless, a small but determined band of indoor cyclists rode together and even raced on Netathlon courses which ranged from real-world simulations to novelty courses like the Moon.
The Dutch trainer manufacturing company, Tacx was also an early pioneer of what came to be known as Virtual Cycling with its Tacx Training Software or TTS systems. With greater resource behind it than Netathlon, Tacx marketed an integrated solution for indoor cyclists, bundling some of its higher-end turbo trainers like the Fortius and the iMagic with its TTS software. Videos showed cyclists training in attractive indoor settings and competing against other riders in remote locations The "social" aspect of indoor cycling was described by Tacx as "Multi-Player" and its competitive element was actively marketed by the company with video of riders in different European cities racing against each other in the Tacx virtual world Whilst the concept was visionary, the execution was poor and the company's forums for TTS and Multi-Player were notorious for hosting dozens of angry users complaining angrily that they could not get the software to work to their satisfaction. A small number of die-hards persisted but the decision by Tacx to charge an additional fee for a multi-player licence and persistent problems with the software meant that the concept never reached a critical mass.
Maps Zwift
Zwift: Early Days
In 2012/13 Zwift co-founder Eric Min was wondering what to do next, having sold his interest in the company he co-founded and spent more than a decade building, Sakonnet Technology Min, as CEO, had developed the company's proprietary energy trading platform alongside friend and co-founder Alarik Myrin, who served as Chief Technology Officer The pair had been "sitting on a $100m contract," which over five years they "had taken a lot of that off the table."
Min, a lifelong cyclist and promising amateur rider as a youth, had sponsored New York cycling club CRCA during his time at Sakonnet but had rejected the cycling business as a place to develop his next venture, until he had what he has since described as "a eureka moment." Min had found himself confined to riding indoors because of location (living in central London) alongside a shortage of time due to family and work commitments. He rated the non-interactive options, or poorly executed programmes available to the indoor cyclist at the time unsatisfactory and believed he could improve on them by "making cycling social". Min's belief was under-pinned by his passion for friendly competition during training or social rides during his time in New York cycling clubs. Min's reticence to invest in cycling was overcome after a conversation with his elder brother, a private equity specialist, who urged him to "stick to what you know." Myrin had also urged Min to turn his attention to cycling. Min invited Scott Barger, who would later head Business Development at Zwift, to join him on a tour of Europe speaking to leading brands in cycling. They ran their ideas past leaders in the field and the feedback they received was that their ideas could work
In mid April 2012 Jon Mayfield posted screenshots of a hobby project on slowtwitch, a website for triathletes. The images and short narrative text was the culmination of a project Mayfield had started in 2010 to write a programme which would calculate the power output of a popular "dumb trainer", the Kurt Kinetic Rock and Road. Both projects had been weekend and evening pastimes. Mayfield had spent 15 years working in the video games industry in graphics engines programming, latterly with a short period working for a Government-funded think-tank researching potential military uses for games technology.
Mayfield had wanted to find a way to "make training less dull" and he related how he had spent "quite a few hours" riding on his creation over the previous two winters. Mayfield had called it "a new 3D Trainer Program" and he described how the programme used ANT+ to read from sensors attached to the bike and, crucially, how the programme estimated watts "using standard trainer speed -> power equations" - the technology which would ultimately be at the heart of Zwift. Mayfield described AI (Artificial Intelligence) bot racers programmed to ride at various speeds, steering functionality using an adapted games joystick and voice prompts to guide him through interval training. Mayfield concluded:"I should probably turn this thing into a product".
Min saw the post and promptly contacted Mayfield, making arrangements to fly to LA to speak to him. Min would later describe "showing up on Jon's doorstep" as critical to forming a relationship with Mayfield and persuading him to give up his job to become a co-founder of Zwift. Mayfield had rejected other overtures from potential partners since the slowtwitch post had been published.
Mayfield later described the first meeting with Min, which took place in his spare bedroom. "As I gave the demo I realized mid-way through that I was wearing my ANT+ heart rate strap and Eric and Scott could see my nervousness graphed in real time right on my 42" TV. My resting rate was mid 40's back then and I think I was up over 110bpm just standing there talking." Mayfield and Min decided to work together and the company's four co-founders were in place.
By January 31st 2014 Zwift had raised seed funding of $350,000 from co-founders Eric Min and Alarik Myrin
Zwift: Beta
Working from a small office in Long Beach, California, Mayfield and a small team of developers produced Zwift's first virtual world, Jarvis Island. The fictional world was located in a real place, with GPS co-ordinates, to facilitate the upload of virtual rides to the ride tracking website Strava.
The course, also known as Zwift Island, was a 4.9km long lap set in a tropical paradise, with palm trees, ocean-side roads, wooded climbs, yachts and an early iteration of the "Italian village" which would figure in the later version of Zwift's flagship course, Watopia. There were some visual similarities with, and references to, co-founder Jon Mayfield's "new 3D Trainer Program" as well as inspiration drawn from the extensive views from Zwift's ocean-side offices in Long Beach.
The course was relatively flat, with two short climbs and could be ridden either clockwise or anti-clockwise. The beta introduced several ideas that would be included, and further developed, in later iterations of Zwift, including users being able to win a green jersey for getting the fastest sprint time on designated sprint sections or a polka-dot jersey for the fastest climb or an orange jersey for the fastest lap. Riders also benefitted from the draft, an idea taken from real world cycling, whereby a rider tucked in behind a second rider to the front would benefit from reduced wind resistance, allowing more speed for the same effort.
Early users were quick to post video of Zwift's beta as an effective means of explaining a concept which was new to most cyclists
Jarvis Island was released as an invite-only beta product on September 30, 2014 Early beta testers were prioritised for invite based on ownership of both a Smart Trainer, and a relatively new computer. Ownership of a Wahoo Kickr, the leading product in what was a new category of turbo trainer saw applicants gain a significant advantage in gaining entry to the beta programme, for which there was very significant demand. More than 13,000 applications were received for 1,000 beta places.
In publicity surrounding the launch which took place simultaneously in Rapha Clubhouses in London, New York and San Francisco, CEO Eric Min spoke extensively of the company's plans to "game-ify" indoor cycling and to partner with high end brands like Pinarello, Rapha and Wahoo Fitness.
Beta testers rode in the company of AI bot riders or "the blue guys", semi-translucent cyclists placed on the course by Zwift programmers to swell the population and to provide draft and pacing for riders without cycling mates.
Zwift had set a date of January 2015 for moving from closed to open beta. In a post on the company's Facebook page on January 14, 2015 the company announced it would delay the move to open beta, revealing that requests for beta invites had now exceeded 23,000 and that the development team was prioritising making Zwift available on the Mac OS platform. The company also announced that the beta community had grown to over 4,000 cyclists. No date was set for the move to open beta.
On 22 April 2015 Zwift announced that it was moving to a new map, Watopia, and Jarvis Island was retired. Many very early Zwifters harbour nostalgia for the first virtual world and periodically there are rumours that Jarvis could return. The position is uncertain with the company neither ruling it out, nor in. By May 2015 Zwift had moved into open beta
The Richmond UCI Worlds Course was introduced on September 3, 2015 to coincide with the real world event later the same month.
On October 30, 2015 Zwift launched as a fully-fledged product with a $10 monthly subscription fee, heralding the end of the beta programme
Courses
There are three courses, or maps, in Zwift. The company serves maps according to a schedule which is shown in game and on the company website [2] and on third party sites The course schedule principle is frequently discussed in the Zwift communities, with many users expressing a desire for the company to offer the option for users to choose which world they ride in. The company's CEO Eric Min has stated on several occasions that once user numbers increase sufficiently the world switching option will become available. In the meantime "world hacks" have been produced by community members which allow users to choose the world in which to ride. Min has explained that the company has delayed enabling world switching to prevent Zwift maps feeling under populated or lonely.
Watopia is a fictional place with a variety of terrain including coastal, Alpine, volcanic and jungle-influenced environments. Watopia is the preferred map amongst the majority of Zwifters who appreciate its beauty as depicted by greater graphical complexity than other courses and its greater scope to offer a variety of riding experiences, from longer and more steeply-pitched climbs through long descents, flat sections and rolling climbs.
London is a largely flat course based mainly on the British city although it also offers an excursion to Box Hill, a popular real life climb in Surrey. Riders are "teleported" the 22 miles from central London to Box Hill after entering and exiting a London Underground station. The device is used to avoid Zwifters facing riding through the dreary South London suburbs to reach the countryside. The course also includes the fictional "Fox Hill", an alternative route to the summit of Box Hill. London is the only course to feature spectators or by-standers. The course came about, at least partly, as a result of a partnership between Zwift and the popular sportive ride and professional race, Ride London, sponsored by Prudential.
Richmond is generally acknowledged as the least popular map for most users on Zwift. It is a realistic depiction of the course used by professional riders in the 2015 UCI World Championships in Richmond, Virginia, USA. The course is urban in nature and was a landmark for the company in that it was the first "real world" map or course it attempted The course is largely flat, although three short climbs are included. It is a course more popular amongst the racing community than the general user base on Zwift. Its relative unpopularity with general users has led to it being served less frequently than Watopia or London.
Both Watopia and London have been subject to a number of extensions - events which are greeted with excitement by the Zwift community and which, on arrival, are charted in detail. The release of new courses or extensions are traditionally signalled by the Zwift CEO Eric Min riding the new section several days in advance of release and posting his ride to ride sharing site Strava, where he has over 8,000 followers
The widespread availability and use of screen capture software also means that usually within a very short period of release the course extensions are ridden by community leaders and influencers and the results posted on social media
The development of new courses is a subject which generates frequent debate in the Zwift communities, with some users expressing a desire for more real world courses, especially based on Tour de France stages or other famous parcours from the world of pro cycling whereas other users would like to see the creative potential of fictional worlds like Watopia more fully explored.
In 2018 Zwift is slated to deliver a further extension to the London map and a completely new map
Community
Like other MMOs, a passionate and populous community has grown up around Zwift, with the single biggest forum, Zwift Riders, to be found on Facebook. The social media site also hosts dozens of other country specific groups with many of the biggest to be found in the English-speaking markets of the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia where Zwift is popular. The Nordic and Benelux countries also have active Facebook communities and it is thought that there are more than 100 country specific Facebook groups active in the Zwift community. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg used the platform to help continue training after suffering a broken arm Zwift's own Facebook page has more than 182,000 followers
As well as country-specific or general Facebook groups, Zwift has spawned a number of specialist groups which concentrate on specific aspects of the virtual cycling experience. These range from those which act as a forum for over-50 riders; heavier riders, new riders; slower riders; women riders; racers; coding nerds and even venters Many of the groups develop their own culture and brands of humour.
Echoing real life cycling, the Zwift community also features a number of virtual cycling clubs or teams. Some are very large, with hundreds of members and membership policies varying from open to invite-only. Some of the largest clubs are KRT; ODZ; WBR, Zwift Fitness and TFC Clubs and teams offer a smaller community than the general groups, and many of the club-team environments are highly supportive in specific areas. They also organise and promote events and races as well as organising and leading group rides. These vary in nature from the purely social to hard core training rides or mini-races.
Zwift is well represented on other social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram. An early partnership between Zwift and ride-sharing site Strava has led to integration with Zwift rides being automatically uploaded to Strava if users enable the function. The integration has increased the ability of Zwifters to find and follow each other, forging social and sporting connections.
Zwift's mobile app ZML also serves a number of community functions with Zwifters able to follow each other and receive notifications if friends begin riding in the virtual world.
As in the wider gaming world, streaming is a significant factor in the Zwift community, with Twitch and increasingly Facebook Live used to broadcast events, races, training and coaching sessions and other Zwift-related content. One of the biggest streaming destinations is ZwiftCommunityLive
Zwift as a company is highly visible in the Zwift community with the CEO Eric Min and other senior staff intervening frequently and even going as far as answering technical support questions for individual users.
The community is highly valued by the company for a number of reasons: There is a great deal of knowledge and goodwill amongst Zwifters and the support function of the community is seen daily as Zwifters help each out with technical difficulties or filling in knowledge gaps as there is no official Zwift user manual. Whilst Zwift provides an official technical support system, many issues are solved through the community, allowing the company to control its spend in this area. Secondly, the community provides the vast majority of the content on Zwift, especially in the form of events. Zwifters volunteer time, energy and expertise to organise, promote and lead a variety of group events, from social rides and workouts to races. Zwift's Events Calendar would be populated with far fewer events if community volunteers did not bolster the company's official events in a very significant way. And finally, the community has leaped into a vacuum to supply functions that the company has been unwilling to do, most notably in the racing arena. Both ZwiftPower and CVR have pioneered ranking and results services for races in advance of lighter offerings by the company. Both organisations are highly active in moves to govern and regulate racing on the platform. Zwift has proved reluctant to apply sanctions to subscribers who may contravene racing rules and it has fallen to the community to take the lead in this area.
In return for the support and additional functions provided by the community Zwift offers financial support, often unpublicised and behind-the-scenes, to significant community figures and functions. The company acknowledges its support of leading content creators whose work is valued by the community, including the ZwiftInsider website the Zwiftcast podcast Shane Miller's YouTube channel and the Zwift Community Live platform
Racing
Racing on Zwift has taken place since the earliest days of the beta programme. Whilst not accurately documented, racing took place on Jarvis Island according to early beta users, and there is evidence of racing from May 2015 on the newly launched Watopia course. One of the earliest groups to offer established racing was KISS which started races in late 2015 and has grown to become one of the most respected race organisers on the platform, organising many races in partnership with Zwift itself such as the Zwift World Championship and the eCrit series of races. Another of the earliest race series took place at 18.30 British Summer Time on Friday and was known as the Friday Training Race or FTR. In keeping with what was to become customary, one or more participants would post video of the race action
References
External links
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Source of article : Wikipedia
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