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Zwiftcast Special: How The Alpe du Zwift Was Made

Video: How they made Alpe du Zwift

Seems that there’s a very good reason why they aren’t releasing new climbs and routes every other day…
by Alex Bowden
Mon, Apr 02, 2018 16:26
8

Ever wondered how Zwift creates its on-screen terrain? We hadn’t – then we watched this Zwiftcast video and found ourselves becoming more and more intrigued. Then, after watching the video for a little longer, we started to feel like we were watching live coverage of someone’s very slow, very painstaking job. We also felt a certain sense of awe at just how much work goes into this stuff.

Billed as a “peak” (no idea whether that’s a deliberate joke) behind the curtain at the tools and techniques used to create the Alpe du Zwift climb, the video gives a sense of the incredible attention to detail required to build the environments that Zwifters ride around.

The team spent months working on Alpe du Zwift, building everything you get to see. It’s not enough to build a fence, for example – they also have to add wood grain and paint it and add shadows and whatnot. And that’s just for a bit of fence. You pass more than the odd bit of fence while riding a 12km climb.

However, there is a limit to how detailed the environment can become. Compromises sometimes need to be made.

“We always want more grass. But things don’t run with too much grass.”

Zwift
Alex Bowden

Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.

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8 comments

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RouleurTwo | 6 years ago
0 likes

Thanks for the Zwiftcast credit guys. 

 

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jlebrech | 6 years ago
0 likes

Is there a prop free 3d gpx training app you can use instead of zwift?

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JustADude | 6 years ago
0 likes

<p>Why no procedural generation? Seem that could open up a lot of (very detailed) possibilities.</p>

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Fluffed | 6 years ago
2 likes

Meanwhile, you still can't end a ride without completely exiting the program after *years* of people asking for this 'feature'.

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CXR94Di2 replied to Fluffed | 6 years ago
0 likes
fluffed wrote:

Meanwhile, you still can't end a ride without completely exiting the program after *years* of people asking for this 'feature'.

You can actually. If you have entered a race the result is pulled from Zwift. The full ride if you keep cycling will need to be finished by exiting Zwift. Not a big deal, ensures a clean shutdown.

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captain_slog replied to CXR94Di2 | 6 years ago
0 likes

Quote:

Billed as a “peak”

That's "pique", Shirley? Someone ask Jack.

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Fluffed replied to CXR94Di2 | 6 years ago
0 likes

CXR94Di2 wrote:

You can actually. If you have entered a race the result is pulled from Zwift. The full ride if you keep cycling will need to be finished by exiting Zwift. Not a big deal, ensures a clean shutdown.[/quote]

 

That's a different thing to do with events/ races though. If you want to manually stop start without exiting, logging back in ,finding devices etc, you can't. You also can't turn off the terrible intro music (you can delete the file, but it's not obvious ), or have the thing *not* minimise to win tray, which will crash on wake anyway.. it's pretty messy really.

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handlebarcam | 6 years ago
2 likes

Couldn't they have just got Andy Serkis to dress up in a form-fitting green suit, with ping-pong balls attached, and got him to play the mountain?

Also, peak/peek probably isn't a deliberate play on words, but the result of too much grass.

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